that's the message of a new book by co-authors tom friedman and michael mandelbaum, "that used to be us: how america fell behind in the world it invented and how we can come back". when i talked with "new york times" columnist friedman, i asked him to explain his book title. what did we used to be? >> we can become the world's richest, most powerful country by accident. the formula for success build on five pillars. educating our people up to and beyond what who whatever the technology, whether the cotton gen or supercomputer, infrastructure to promote congress, having the best most open immigration to track the most energetic and talented immigrants to start new companies, four, to have the best rules for investing and capitol to mation and preventing reckssness and last having the best government funded research to push the boundaries of knowledge. that was our formula for suggest sess, that used to be us. and the reason we are where we are today is in large part due to the fact we got away from that formula. >> susie: and tom, you have a blueprint that you say if we go back to doi

tom friedman and michael mandelbaum recently wrote, we're at the most profound point of reflection for innovation and commerce since the gutenberg printing press. our ability to meet this moment and seize the opportunities of this new communication technology is critical to our economic recovery and our economic future. [no audio] investment in basic scientific research and development, laws that encourage entrepreneurship while safeguarding consumers, and the building in continue modernizing of our infrastructure. these pillars are inter-related. improving infrastructure support education and entrepreneurship, and vice versa. innovation and economic success have always been tied together in the u.s. railroads and roadways connect to each other, unleashing economic growth. telephones to the same. we did not get here by chance. we got here by choice. there are times those elements of the infrastructure formed the connective tissue of the modernizing economy. today, it is brought in an internet. abroad and infrastructure consists of the fiber, the cables, the -- broadband infrastructure

my book of the week is tom freedman and michael mandelbaum's "that used to be us."e challenges facing america today. more importantly, the authors prescribe solutions, most of which i agree with. so pick up the book, and then tune in next week when tom friedman will be my guest. >>> now for the last look. kremlin watchers have historically looked for all kinds of signs to determine the pecking order of who will be the next leader. well, the "financial times" has found one indicator that seems to be foolproof. let's see if you can spot it. the line of succession goes from czar nicholas ii, the last emperor of russia, to lenin to stalin, crews chuf, brezhnev, andropov, cher yank oh, gorbachev, putin, medvedev. do you see it now? i'll tell you. unfailingly, they alternate from having a thick shock of hair to being almost bald and then back again. so when prime minister putin announced he was going to run for president again, it really comes as no surprise. there weren't any other bald candidates. so i guess for 2024, we should be looking for a very hairy russian presid

my co-author, michael mandelbaum, and i was telling his wife about the center. because both escalator have been under repair for six months. basically -- >> which is as long as it had taken roughly to build the entire conference center in china. >> actually yeah. almost the exact same amount of time china took to build a conference center was taking us to repair two escalator with 21 stairs each. and our book is not about china, fareed. as you know, it's really about america. and we firmly believe china can succeed and we can succeed. by the way, china can fail and we can succeed. what china doesn't really matter, it's not what we do or what we don't do. the title, that used to be us. does it have a happy ending, we tell people it does, we're just not sure if it's fiction or nonfiction. we're not falling behind china or brazil. we've gotten into the situation because we've gotten away from our formula for success. the thing that got us here, this great public/private partnership that was built on five pillars, education, educating people to use whatever the tech