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Hello, I'm Sam Holmes, and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Each week a few of our favourite writers read their pieces

from the latest issue of the magazine. This week we'll hear from Douglas Murray on

what monkeypox tells us about humanity, Lionel Shriver, an almost being thrown out of South

Africa, Julian Glover on the Battle for the Countryside, and James Bartholomew on why he's

buying a tank for the foundation of the history of totalitarianism.

First up is Douglas Murray.

I hate to be one of those columnists who says,

I told you so, but I told you so.

Looking back this week through the vast underground vaults at Spectator H.Q,

I see that centuries ago, in April

2020, I explained the problem with us humans as a species. As I said back then, someone

always shags a monkey. There are almost eight billion of us on this planet today, and the likelihood that we're all

going to make judicious decisions all the time is vanishingly small. The mating decisions of the

species alone are notoriously prone to trial and error, and the entire future of our species rides perpetually along this cliff edge.

Last month I read in the Indian press of four men arrested by police in the Western Indian state of Maharashtra.

Their crime, going on footage collected from their mobile phones,

the men in their 30s and 40s stand accused of gang raping, killing, cooking and eating a rare

monitor lizard in one of India's most protected nature reserves. I found the headline on this article to be of the kind that draws you in.

So I read on.

...