difd mccullough will give us perspective on the present through the lens of the past. why in the world is not a tiny nation about to skip over a date entirely? i'll explain. next up, a fascinating look inside spy games. both the fictional and nonfictional varieties with columnist and novelist david ignatius. then a look at innovation with the master architect frank gehry. finally, why president bush might have offended some italians on inauguration day. first, here's my take. we hear a lot about leadership these days, mostly in the sense of the failure of leadership, the absence of leadership. certainly that's the view of many people who oppose president obama. but there are also many democrats who believe that president obama has been a disappointment, a bad manager, an ineffectual leader. the conventional wisdom is that obama just doesn't have what it takes to be the kind of leader we need, the kind we have had in the past, someone, for example, like bill clinton, who was just such a gifted leader, a legendary player. now, i have a huge admiration for clinton. i think he was a very good president and he is almost preternaturally talented as a politician. but let's recall what his first few years looked like. he began his presidency with the fiasco of gays in the military then moved to two failed nominees for attorney general. remember zoe baird? then went on to try and failed spectacularly to pass universal health care. two years into his presidency, the republican party won both the senate and house of representatives, gaining control of the latter for the first time since 1952. in his second term, of course, was the impeachment scandal. i'm not picking on clinton. as i said, i greatly admire him. but we forget what people thought of leaders at the time. on the republican side, the air is so thick with ronald reagan nostalgia, you can barely see through it to the actual past. the reality was that reagan was a shrewd politician with some strong convictions who pursued a tough, smart foreign policy -- >> tear down this wall! >> but he was also a president who ran through six national security advisers in his eight years, with a lax enough management style that it produced a major scandal -- the iran contra affair -- in which perhaps the most startling fact was that the president didn't seem to be about a major foreign policy project of questionable legality being run by his own national security council. for all the hero worshipping these days, reagan was often derided on the right for his many tax increases and especially for his dealings with the soviet union. conservative leaders called reagan a "useful idiot." commentators like norman podharetz called it the reagan road to detente. jimmy carter wanted to run -- ted kennedy against him in the primaries. richard nixon seen as a sellout and closet liberal. i could go on. my point is, we cannot really tell the quality of a leader judged from the noise of the present. we need time and perspective, which is why one reads history and listens to men like david mccullough. so let's get started. one way to get some insight into the current mess in washington is to step back and get some perspective. i tried to do some of that at the top of this show. but i wanted to get some deeper historical perspective on the performance of the president and of congress, and few today understand the past and present of this nation better than david mccullough. he's one of the world's most decorated historians, having won two pulitzer prizes for his biographies of harry truman and john adams. welcome. >> thank you very much. >> we have in the white house a president who is clearly interested in history, a writer himself. how do you think about him? >> i admire him very much, and i think that his -- his time in office presented him with problems such as very few presidents have ever had to address. and given the complexity and the gravity of those problems, i think he's handled himself very well. my hat goes off to him, my heart goes out to him. who -- who could possibly do that job? no human being is sufficient for that role. it's beyond human capacity. we all ought to want to help him, we all want to want to help everybody in elective office to do the job the way it ought to be done, to live up to the responsibility. in the old house of representatives chamber in the capitol, what's now statuary hall, over the doorway, there is a figure of clio, the goddess of history. and she's riding in her chariot. and on the side of the chariot is a clock put there way back in the 1830s or earlier, still run perfectly. she's writing in her book of history, and the idea was that the representatives would look up to see what time it is now, but they should be reminded that that's just present-daytime. what really matters is what's being written in the book of history. i've known to a greater or lesser degree, i think, seven presidents. and i guess what's impressed me most is how different they have been one from another as men, as human beings. and some of those that i've liked best as people weren't necessarily the best presidents. and my understanding, i think, of what weighs on their minds is pretty close. i don't think i could sleep at night if i knew what they know and had all of that on my shoulders. i don't know how many people could sleep at night. >> when you look at it, mr. mccollough, what makes a great president? >> the capacity to move the country to do better than it thinks it can with the use of the english language. >> communication is that important? >> the power of the written word, the spoken word, very, very important. an ability to stick to your principles. an ability to work with people with whom you disagree and may dislike. i try to stress that exceptional presidents are the exception. we can't expect every president to be a great president. it doesn't happen that way. life isn't like that. and you can't predict -- there isn't a type. they come in all shapes and sizes. who would have ever thought that harry truman would be one of our greatest presidents? there's no question he was. he said, i never forgot where i came -- who i was, where i came from, and where i would go back to. now, that's a man who knows exactly who he is. he's not creating this adoration and limelight in order to feel good about himself. he didn't want the job. it was thrust upon him. he did not have the gift of moving the country with words the way fdr did or lincoln did. and he did not have the physical presence that washington -- i think washington is our greatest president. >> why? >> he set the standards for behavior, integrity, and patriotism of the best kind. not the flag-waving kind but true love of country. all of our best presidents without exception have had a sense of history. and i don't think that's coincidental. and one of the things that a sense of history gives to a person is not just an appreciation and understanding of what happened before we came along, but the realization that we, too, are part of history and we, too, are going to be judged by history. and that's extremely important. that today's polls, tomorrow's headlines, are not going matter. what matters -- how will you look, how will this time look in time to come. what are -- what cathedrals are we going to build? we don't ask ourselves that much. >> but you're optimistic at the end of the day. >> yes, i am. i'm optimistic in the long run principally because of what i see in the generation of my own children and grandchildren and in the students that i meet when i'm lecturing at colleges and universities. i'm distressed, i'm sometimes stunned by how much they don't know about the history of our country. but i know how bright they are, how well meaning they are, that they want to do the right thing. i agree with you that we're making a grievous error in not accepting able, talented people who come here for our education opportunities. a big mistake. that is the natural resource of all natural resources, the most important of all, what's up here, ideas, ingenuity, foresight, all of that, training. we ought to be -- as canada is being, we ought to be a place they all want to be. and come on over. we need you. what would we be without immigration? think of who never would have become an american without immigration. that's who we are. thank goodness. >> powerful words. david mccullough, thank you. we will be right back to talk about a time when america and americans were fascinated by france. david mccullough's new book when we come back. in america, we believe in a future that is better than today. since 1894, ameriprise financial has been working hard for their clients' futures. never taking a bailout. helping generations achieve dreams. buy homes. put their kids through college. retire how they want to. ameriprise. the strength of america's largest financial planning company. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you, one-to-one. together, for your future. ♪ gives you a 50% annual bonus! so you earn 50% more cash. according to research, everybody likes more cash. well, almost everybody... ♪ would you like 50% more cash? no! but it's more money. [ male announcer ] the new capital one cash rewards card. the card for people who want 50% more cash. what's in your wallet? woah! [ giggles ] you tell us what you want to pay, and we give you a range of coverages to choose from. who is she? that's flobot. she's this new robot we're trying out, mostly for, like, small stuff. wow! look at her go! she's pretty good. she's pretty good. hey, flobot, great job. oops. [ powers down ] uh-oh, flobot is broken. the "name your price" tool, only from progressive. call or click today. we are back with the historian, david mccullough, whose latest book, "the greater journey," is about a wave of 19th century americans who migrated to paris. we think of americans as famously uninterested in the world. we think of america today and don't care what's going on with the rest of the world, we don't want to borrow anything from the rest of the world. the americans you're describing seem fascinated by france. why? >> they craved -- craved france, and they weren't anxious to go there because they were disenchanted with our country. they went to find out if the talent they had was really as strong as people were telling them and in order to get the training, experience, they could not get here. there were no museums with paintings hanging in them then. there was not one world of architecture in the united states -- this was in the 1830s. and no way to train as an artist to work or to get the kind of training that one would need to be a sculptor or a painter. and paris was the medical capital of the world. so they went for a multitude of professions and artistic careers. if you were a foreign student in france, in paris, you could go to the sorbonne, you could go to l'ecole for nothing, for free. imagine students coming to harvard or yale or stanford were coming here and going free. it was part of the policy of france at the time. >> wow. >> so if they could afford to support themselves, room and board, then they could go to these greatest of institutions. but american medical training for example was woefully behind. most medical doctors in the united states in the 1840s, 1850s, through the civil war, had never been to medical school. >> the paris that you describe is a place that is clearly the center of the world in a sense. we forget now because the industrial revolution had just begun. so you're describing the last gasp of the great agriculture revolutions, and france was probably the richest country in the world, and paris certainly the center. >> what most people don't realize that paris was the cultural center of the world. and this city of new york became the cultural center of the world after world war ii. but paris was also the center for medical education, medical science, science itself, technology. the brooklyn bridge for example, stands on an underwater foundation system called caissons which was developed by french engineers in paris. so the engineer of the brooklyn bridge, washington robely, went to paris to find out how they do it. that's how he was able to do it. and most american don't realize that, how much we owed to france. >> i have to go on a tangent. you wrote a book about the brooklyn bridge. >> i did. >> here you are talking about the engineer of the brooklyn bridge and what he borrowed from france. how does that stand in your mind? >> particularly a powerful experience, you never forget it. and some subjects, once i'm finished with them, i -- that's it. sort of gotten it out of my system. with the brooklyn bridge, there's something about it, i'm still involved. my wife and i take a walk over the bridge every year. we go back and walk through the neighborhood we lived in when we were first married. and i think it's one of the great accomplishments of our civilization. it's both a work of technology and a work of art. and it stands -- it stands the test of time both visually and technically. it's a magnificent production. and it also rises up out of what was really a very corrupt time. much like our own. and the idea of this emblem of affirmation can rise up out of that swamp of the gilded age is to me reassuring, and particularly in our time. >> our times, though, seem more parochial. i mean, the people you discuss in the book, they seem so interested in the world and in intellectual currents in france and elsewhere, as well. the people -- >> it wasn't cool to be cynical then. it wasn't cool to be filled with self-pity. people often ask when i'm starting a book, what's your theme? particularly some of our academic friends. i have no idea what my theme is. i make up something to calm them down, but i have no idea. it's one of the reasons i wrote the book. one of the themse i realized was a theme as i realized halfway through this project, is work. we receive such ballyhoo constantly about ease and happiness being synonymous. again and again, people were saying on paper in their diaries and letters, i've never worked harder in my life, and this is the happiest time of my life. and they're struggling as -- as st. augustus, the sculptor, said they're struggling with the realities of life, the mundane, everyday chores of life, struggling to soar into the blue as he says. and i think that's emblematic of that generation. >> do you think that we've lost some of the optimism and energy that you saw in the 19th century when -- >> yes. temporarily. i'm a short-range pessimist, a long-range optimist. i think we'll get through these troubles. we've been through worse. when 9/11 happened, people said, oh, this is the worst thing we've ever been through. yes, it was terrible, but by no means was it the worst we've ever been through. the revolutionary war, the civil war. imagine, 600,000 people killed. the influenza epidemic, the great depression. these were terrible times. the -- i think maybe the darkest time was right after pearl harbor. we had no army. half our navy had been destroyed. the germans were nearly to moscow. britain was about finished. and churchill came across the atlantic, and he gave a speech and said, "we haven't gone this far because we're made of sugar candy." that's the message we need now. >> and that's the kind of historical perspective we all need. david mccullough, thank you very much. we will be right back. ♪ it's easy to see what subaru owners care about. that's why we created the share the love event. get a great deal on a new subaru and $250 goes to your choice of 5 charities. with your help, we can reach $20 million dollars by the end of this, our fourth year. ♪ when the things that you need come at just the right speed, that's logistics. ♪ ♪ medicine that can't wait legal briefs there by eight, that's logistics. ♪ ♪ freight for you, box for me box that keeps you healthy, that's logistics. ♪ ♪ saving time, cutting stress, when you use ups that's logistics. ♪ welcome back. come with me now a long journey to a far-off island nation about halfway between hawaii and new zealand, samoa. its lush volcanic valleys make it a mostly agricultural nation. it has no military whatsoever, and shouldn't be confused with its neighbor, american samoa. now, if you're tempted to visit, do not plan a celebration there on december 30. why? because that day will simply not exist there. the calendar will jump from the 29th of december to the 31st. what in the world, right? why? it's actually a smart economic decision. you see, samoa is just 20 miles away from the international dateline. as the name suggests, it's an imaginary longitude that marks a change in date when we fly over sail or steam over it. that line was created more than a century ago when it was decided samoa would be 11 hours behind greenwich mean time outside of london. that's three hours behind pacific time in los angeles. the theory went that being on a similar time zone to the americas would benefit trade and commerce for samoa. but the times quite literally are changing. samoa now does most of its business with its neighbors. but sydney in australia is ten hours ahead of london, and bear with me on the math here, that means samoa has been conducting most of its trade with a country that is 21 hours ahead of it. so when it's friday morning at a samoan factory, australian clients are already at the beach on a sunny saturday. and when the aussies go to work on sunday, the samoans are at sunday church or whatever samoans do on sundays. then samoa will leap forward a day and be just three hours ahead of sydney. samoans already made one historic change to align itself with australia in 2009. it switched from driving on the right side of the road as we do to the left side of the road. now samoans can import cheaper cars from next door. on the one hand, samoa's shift is a story about how economics dictates policy. but it's also a larger narrative about the quiet success of australia. australia's growth rate has averaged nearly 4% for the last two decades, higher than almost every other rich country. it may be on the bottom of the map, but it's on top of almost every livability index. the unemployment rate is low. the deficit is almost negligible. it has strong education, universal health care. one could go on. so how did it get there? self-deprecating aussies may put it down to good luck. they had good weather, abundant natural resources, and a billion chinese hungry to mine australia's metals and minerals. but that's not the whole story. australia's real economic rise dates back to the 1980s and a series of forward-thinking reforms. the government floated its dollar and made the central bank independent. it maintained a budget surplus and kept inflation in check. state-owned firms were privatized, industries deregulated. when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, australia's banks benefited from a more conservative regulated approach. they were not overleveraged, so they weathered the storm, and robust trade with china soaked up a potential drop in australian consumer demand. australia's been smart on another issue that plagues american lawmakers these days -- immigration. it has gone from 98% anglo celtic population after the second world war to having a quarter of its current population born abroad. asians make up 10% of the population. much of the real growth in australia's gdp can be attributed to immigration and population growth. there's much speculation about a lost decade for the united states economy. all samoa had to do to rev up its economy is lose a day. i wish we had that option. we'll be right back. it's been the case that most cia officers sought what was called official coverers, embassy representatives, and other official international organizations. get the technology they love, on the network they deserve. and video chat with up to 9 of your friends with the galaxy nexus by samsung, or get the samsung stratosphere, and for a limited time, get twice the data for the same low price. verizon. not quite knowing what the next phase was going to be, you know, because you been, you know, this is what you had been doing. you know, working, working, working, working, working, working. and now you're talking about, well you know, i won't be, and i get the chance to spend more time with my wife and my kids. it's my world. that's my world. ♪ we get double miles on every purchase. so we earned a holiday trip to the big apple twice as fast! dinner! 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[ male announcer ] get the venture card from capital one and earn double miles on every purchase, every day. go to capitalone.com. i wonder what it could be?! what's in your wallet? i'm alina cho at the cnn world headquarters in atlanta. merry christmas to all of you. here are your headlines this morning. at least three churches in nigeria have been bombed during christmas day services. the first took place west of the country's capital where at least 17 bodies have been recovered. officials are still trying to confirm the total number of casualties. police have arrested four people in connection with the attacks and have recovered four devic s that did not detonate. a city under siege. activists say syrian security forces have surrounded a neighborhood in the western city of combs. the activists say there's been relentless shelling, heavy gunfire. one activist says forces are shooting directly at houses and that people are being targeted if they walk in the streets. there are said to be shortages of medical supplies, fuel and oil. now to russia where the biggest public protest in decades continue today. some 30,000 people in the streets moscow. two things are bringing russians out. they're fursious at the kurnt leadership's vladimir putin's decision to run again for president. protesters are also angry at the results of parliamentary elections held this month, widely seen as rigged. the democratic process still relatively young in russia. today also marks 20 years since the fall of the ussr. pope benedict prayed for peace in his annual christmas day message. the 84-year-old pontiff presided over his seventh christmas mass as pope. he urged the faithful to focus on the essence of the holiday rather than the commercialism. and he stressed the need for finding harmony in an increasingly violent world. >> translator: at this hour, when the world is continually threatened by violence in so many places and in so many different ways, when over and over again there are oppressors' rods and blood-stained cloaks, we cry out to the lord, oh, mighty god, you have appeared as a child and you have revealed yourself to us as the one who loves us, the one through whom love will triumph. and you have shown us that we must be peacemakers with you. >> the vatican actually celebrated midnight mass at 10:00 p.m. last night to accommodate the aging pontiff. and in the race for the gop presidential nomination, mitt romney maintains a solid lead in new hampshire. according to the latest boston globe poll, romney is ahead with 39%. both newt gingrich and ron paul are tied with 17%, while former utah governor jon huntsman comes in with 11%. the new hampshire primary is january 10th. that's a look at the headlines. don't miss my holiday special today at 4:00 p.m. eastern time called "big stars, big giving," my one-on-one interviews with jennifer lopez, tony bennett, president clinton, and will ferrell. that's 4:00 p.m. eastern time. i'm alina cho. "fareed zakaria: gps" continues next. spy agencies are the stuff of fantasy and fiction. so it is fitting that one of our best journalists on the spooky world of foreign affairs has used his vast travels and knowledge to write a novel. "washington post" columnist david ignatius has followed up his book "body of lies," which was turned into a hollywood blockbusters with a new offering, this one called "bloodmoney." it spans the cia operations here and the murky world of pakistan's powerful interservices intelligence. the key is figuring out where the facts end and where the fiction begins. david ignatius joins me now. i love this book, like i did about the ore book, about iran's nuclear program. you choose these topics that jump off the front pages. when one is reading it, because i know how much you know about the cia and how much time you spent talking to people, i have to believe lots of it is true. >> i don't want to play games with you, my friend, or the reader. i am painting on a canvas of fiction with the colors of life. i have spent lots of time with the isi. i've traveled with them to south waziristan. i've met with their director general, general pasha. as i said in "time" magazine the other week, i even have an e-mail correspondence with isi officers. so i do know the real-life subject. and i've tried in "bloodmoney" to tell a story that gets at the crazy relationship between the isi and the cia, this absolutely fascinating, often mutually destructive -- two scorpions in a bottle kind of relationship that they have. that said, i do have to say, this is a novel. it wouldn't be fun to read if it wasn't reinvented -- if it wasn't real life reinvented in the mind of the author. >> let's start with the cia. so you have a cia operation, and you have these guys, often on their own, often in businesses as fronts. i was always taught that the cia offices were at the u.s. embassy. while you didn't know who they were, you could make some guesses about them. is it, in fact, true that there are lots of cia officers around that have covers in private business and trading companies and things like that all over the world? >> it's increasingly true. when you and i were getting started as journalists and for the past decades, it's been the case that most cia officers sought what was called official coverers, embassy representatives, other official international organizations. that was acceptable when the target you were facing was soviet diplomats. you'd meet them at cocktail parties, spot them, try to develop them. but the targets are so different now. and so there's a feeling that you need genuinely clandestine platforms. so there's been a lot of experimentation in the areas that i'm imagining in my book, in the book. i invent this goofy entertainment company based in studio city, california, called the hit parade. a platform for cia officers to do completely secret operations overseas. are they doing that kind of thing? not to the extent that i write in my book, but i'm sure that they're experimenting with what they call nonofficial cover or noc operations. the problem is they're really hard to manage and really expensiv expensive. and there are a big cadre of naysayers at langley who say, "don't do this." >> now pakistan,. you paint a picture of the interservices intelligence directorate that as i can tell is very true to life in this particular sense -- they have lots of connections with all these militant groups. they've always had them. at some level, they don't even deny that they have them. they say these are elements of pakistani society. and yet, they are quite reluctant to do anything about them, to shut them off in any way. do you think that that part of the book that you described is true to life? >> yes. i think the tragedy of the isi and arguably of pakistan as a whole is that it's caught in a web that it's spun with our help it must be said that it now can't escape from. it's a web first of connections with jihadi organizations. the isi is above all a paramilitary organization. it doesn't do all that much, collection of intelligence. it's not a very good spy agency. but it's good at running covert action. >> the general framework of the book is that the cia and isi are cooperating, but the cia is running effectively code ops against the isi. and the isi is at least allowing these jihadi groups to attack and infiltrate the cia. and that spider's web seems very real. >> that is -- that is drawn from life. i mean, the truth is that these intelligence services operate against each other. that happens more in real life, not just with pakistan, but we have a complicated intelligence relationship with france. we have a complicated intelligence relationship with other allies. but there's a way in which the cia and isi both absolutely need each other and absolutely don't trust each other. it's been a particularly volatile combination because they're always marching in tandem. you can imagine a situation where one guy is trying to trip the guy or nudging him, up to some kind of horseplay. that's what it's like. and i used to think, you know, that these two should get a marriage counselor and figure it out. i've kind of given up on that. the reality is intelligence services lie. that's what their job is. these guys are going to keep lying to each other. they need political control to get them going in the same direction for the national interests of both countries. and if they can do that, i'd have some hope this story will turn out acceptably. >> david ignatius, thank you very much. great book. i thoroughly enjoyed it. >> thank you. thank you, fareed. >> we will be right back. ♪ anything? no. ♪ how about now? nope. ♪ [ dog barking ] ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] the chevy silverado. ♪ [ male announcer ] with best-in-class 4x4 available v8 fuel economy. finally! ♪ [ male announcer ] from getting there... to getting away from there. chevy runs deep. ♪ sing polly wolly doodle t all the day ♪from there. ♪ hah think for a second about the most innovative thing you've seen. i bet whatever comes to mind was probably a technological innovation, a gee-whiz gadget, or a joke-cracking robot, something like that. but the fact is, innovation can and does come in many different areas, from business practices to the arts, literature, music, painting, design, architecture. the finest artists are often the most innovative. think of jackson pollock's paintings. ♪ >> charlie parker's bebop. one of the finest architects fit that model. he is frank gehry, known for his undulating waves at the guggenheim museum among others. thank you for joining me. >> thank you. >> how do you come up with an idea? because so much of what you have done was not conventional, was not the way buildings were built, was not the way people conceived of things. where did stuff come to you? >> well, i'm very thorough, which people probably don't realize. i spend a lot of research, i spend a lot of time with the clients, with the site, with the program. and invent as i go along ideas that respond to those. and in that process with the client involved and a clear understanding of budget and, you know, engineering and what can go on, we vet some directions together. and they're complicit which i love, because at the end they've -- when it looks strange, they've been part of it. >> the strangeness comes -- >> well, i don't know why -- to me it's not strange. it looks like everything else is strange. and so stuff starts to unfold in little models and ideas and sketches. a lot of -- there are about 50 to 100 models made in that process. >> and it's very deliberative, because -- >> yes. and then when i understand it completely, when i think i know, then i kind of put it away. and then i call out the candy store. i call out when i know the problem, everything about it that i can imagine. and then i start to make the real design and the ideas. and so the language comes from -- of the curves comes from history. it's not just invented out of holed cloth. if you look at faddeus' marbles and the old marbles in britain, they express motion in the marbles. you see the soldiers pushing their shields, and it's palpable. you feel it. if you look at the indian shiva figures moving, and i've studied those, and there's movement within their material. so it's from history, it's possible. >> so does the famous story that you took a piece of paper and crumpled it and looked at it and that was the disney hall in l.a. >> we asked frank gehry to build us a concert hall. >> and that's the bane of my existence -- everybody thinks i'm going to crumple people. clients sacrum. -- say crumple a piece of paper and we'll build it. >> in fact it was a long -- >> no, no, no, that was just a fun thing. but it has haunted me. people do -- have seen "the simpsons," believe it. >> when you design a building, is your principal concern to make something dazzling beautiful, or is your principal concern to have it so that it functions exactly the way that it's meant to be, an apartment building with all the apartments? >> yes. to function is first, and to get it build it has to be on budget, and you deal with the technology and culture of construction, and that's complicated. and i think it's very important. and then to bring something to it other than just -- and it doesn't cost extra. that's the interesting thing. we've proven that over and over again. so a building should engender some kind of emotional response. if you go to disney hall, the key issue was the relationship between performer and audience. i worked my butt off to make that special. i think it helps the psychologically, it's psycho acoustic we call it. if the orchestra feels the audience and you've experienced this when you give talks, you speak better. you feel it. and that happens in a performance. and i think it happens in everything. >> what about this new building in new york? it's a big apartment building. what did you see as the crucial thing to get right? >> the pro forma for the apartment was a t-shaped building. a given in new york. it's a new york model. we made it a little bit higher so that -- and added the stair steps, lengthy historic buildings in new york. we didn't have to do that, we could have been straight up. so that was the decoration if you will. it was my trying to fit a building into new york. and then i added the folds. folds are like when your mother holds you in your arms, very basic, i think. it's primitive, that people respond to folds. and i think that's why great artists in history focus so much on it. and so i wanted to have that warmth, that feeling in the city, that this building was accessible. and that it -- by adding the folds it was somehow timeless. it wasn't exactly a modernist slab. it had some kind of thing to it. >> do you think that when you look at american art, architecture, creativity, right now, does it feel like we're still at the top of the world? does it feel like in the 1950s, abstract expressionism taking the world by storm? where is america in today's kind of landscape? >> i think we've just been through in architecture, be a very expressionist period where there's a lot of money, people are doing things, and it's coming to a screeching halt. by the culture around architecture -- there's kind of a backlash. and they're saying focus on sustainability. focus on the social issues, and the architecture should become secondary. and it seems like so thoughtless to eliminate the baby with the bath water kind of -- use those other things. it becomes a mantra for less talented people to get their way probably. >> frank gehry, thank you. we will be right back. since 1894, ameriprise financial has been working hard for their clients' futures. never taking a bailout. helping generations achieve dreams. buy homes. put their kids through college. retire how they want to. ameriprise. the strength of america's largest financial planning company. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you, one-to-one. together, for your future. ♪ it's easy to see what subaru owners care about. that's why we created the share the love event. get a great deal on a new subaru and $250 goes to your choice of 5 charities. with your help, we can reach $20 million dollars by the end of this, our fourth year. it is christmas day. merry christmas to those of you celebrating. and that inspired my question of the week. it is what percentage of the world's population is christian? is it a, 11%, b, 22%, c, 33%, or d, 44%? stay tuned, we'll tell you the correct answer. make sure you go to cnn.com/gps for ten more questions. and while you're there, make sure you check out our web site, the global public square. there's fresh content every day about world affairs, economics, innovation, and much more. now our book of the week happens to be a picture book. we're going to give you a combo book of the week and "last look," two for the price of one which is actually zero. the book is called "don't get me wrong: the global gestures guide." and if you're a citizen of the world which you presumably are if you're watching this show, you might want to take notes here. the book is all about how different hand gestures mean different things in different places. for example, here in the utsds, -- united states, if you want two sugars in your coffee you might make this gesture at the barista. in many northern european nations, instead of doing that, you would do this this to signify two. and that same gesture means eight in china. and the same hand signal with a little movement added means not good in italy. put those finger on your forehead, and it means loser in many parts of the world. but let's go back to italy for a second. i would suggest being very careful with your gestures there. president george w. bush and his wife laura may very well have made enemies out of married italian men on inauguration day in 2005. why? well, they flashed the cameras with the symbol of the texas longhorns. the hook 'em horns. in some parts of the world, it's the symbol for rock on. unfortunately, in it italy it means your wife is cheating on you.