America's Human Arithmetic.
A conversation with Nick Eberstadt.
Nick Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he researches and writes extensively on international security in the Korean Peninsula and Asia, demographics, and economic development. Domestically, he focuses on poverty and social well-being. Dr. Eberstadt is also a senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research.
His many books and monographs include Men Without Work: Post-Pandemic Edition (2022); Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis: Dimensions, Causes, Implications (2010); The Poverty of “the Poverty Rate” (2008); The End of North Korea (1999); The Tyranny of Numbers (1995); and Poverty in China (1979). His latest is Lessons for an Unserious Superpower: The “Scoop” Jackson Legacy and US Foreign Policy (2024).
Joe Klein and I caught up with Nick on Wednesday (29 April) to talk with him about his latest book, ‘America’s Human Arithmetic’, a collection of 15 essays that examine the state of the nation through the eyes of its leading demographer.
The essays grapple with a fundamental disconnect: why are Americans increasingly dissatisfied and less confident in their institutions at the very same time the US has achieved unparalleled wealth and unmatched global power? Prosperity and flourishing, Nick observes, have become decoupled.
Nick explains some of the reasons why in this episode of ‘Night Owls’. You can listen to it by clicking on the forward arrow below.
(‘Night Owls’ interview with Nick Eberstadt. Recorded 29 April 2026. Produced by Dale Eisinger. Hosts: Joe Klein and yours truly.)
If you prefer to listen to podcasts on one of the major podcast platforms, you can find this and all the other ‘Night Owls’ podcasts at Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and iHeart.
Hearing your stats on the “not working” male population and their startling self-reported 2,000 hrs/year of screen time and almost no time spent on “civic” matters gave this retired engineer a couple of thoughts.
First, “Yikes!”
That’s the number of hours we would budget for a full-time man-year on an engineering project!
Second, suppose some fraction of that screen time contained engaging, unavoidable and short PSA bits about community service … coupled with a robust and varied volunteer program to put part of these guys’ time and effort into civic projects?
It would take a far more imaginative mind than mine to weave a public service program for 21st-century America, but think about how much different the political landscape might be if a few percent of the young “not really working” population spent some shoulder-to-shoulder (or even online) time working together on things that benefit the community!