I've not read the book yet (it only came out yesterday), but I think there are a few issues with the piece:

First, we should look at the authors of the book. Again, I've NOT read it, so this is based on a bit of internet sleuthing, and nothing more. The authors are primarily writers and news commentators in Canada. John Ibbitson writes for The Glode and Mail and is a political commentator[0]. Dr. Darrell Bricker is a pollster, political commentator, and author of a few books focusing on Canadian current events and issues[1]. I cannot speak for their personal knowledge on Earth's population nor the accuracy of a book that I have not read. However, based on their Wikipedia bios, I can conclude that they are not career professionals in global demographics. Speaking personally, they give me a Robert Reich/Thomas Friedman vibe more than anything.

Now, specifically about the Wired interview, there are some things that stand out:

> And then I saw one woman reach in and pull out a smartphone, look at it, and put it back. And I realized, here we are in a slum in Delhi, and all these women have smartphones. Who can read. Who have data packages. And I was thinking, they have all of human knowledge in their hands now.

Depending on the time and place that the authors were in Delhi, this may be incorrect. Free Basics was recently shot down in 2016, so if they were there after that decision, they are correct [2]. If they were there before that ruling, then it is highly likely that these women were only able to access Facebook and not the internet at large. In addition, though the Wired interview was very short, they may not have had anything other than basic phone functionality. I would love to know more about the actual data on how internet penetration occurs in the lower castes/classes of India.

> The UN says they’re already baked into the numbers. But when I went and interviewed ... Wolfgang Lutz in Vienna, ... he walked me through his projections, ... All he was doing was adding one new variable to the forecast: the level of improvement in female education. And he comes up with a much lower number ..., somewhere between 8 billion and 9 billion.

Based on some quick googling of Dr. Lutz, I would be a fool to disagree with his expert assessments [3]. He holds two doctorates, one in Demographics from U. Penn, and one in Statistics from U. Vienna and has been working in global demographics issues since 1985. I've not researched him in depth, but he seems like a level-headed person without much of an 'agenda'. He is a recent editor of a 1000+ page tome titled "World Population and Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century"[4]. So, if Dr. Lutz's believes that just adding in female education will drop the world population by ~two billion babies, then I would be loathe to argue with him.

> In the Philippines, for example, fertility rates dropped from 3.7 percent to 2.7 percent from 2003 to 2018. That's a whole kid in 15 years.

I'm not certain what 3.7 percent fertility means. I believe that there may be a mis-transcription here. What I think the authors mean is that the Philippines had a birth rate of 3.7 children per woman. For reference, Yemen is an even more extreme example:. In 1986, the fertility rate was over 9. Today it stands at 4; so 5 children in 30 years.

Overall, the Wired article stands as a good promotion for the recently released book. However, I feel that listening from Dr. Lutz himself may be a better and more productive use of time [5][6].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ibbitson

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Bricker

[2] https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Lutz

[4] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/world-population-and...

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeDuJPJ5J5c

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQJ7EApyi-A