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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud.

Each week, we ask three writers from the magazine to read their pieces aloud.

I'm Oscar Edmondson, and here's what's on the podcast.

Freddie Gray questions Biden's supposed hot streak. Is America fast regressing?

Mary Killen warns that a neighbourly feud is far worse than a hosepipe ban.

And finally, Jonathan Miller talks about France's sexual civil war.

Up first, Freddie Gray. It's hardly surprising that China feels emboldened. J-Zing Ping must look at America and see not just a superpower in decline,

but a gerontocracy that has lost its marbles. Last week, Nancy Pelosi, the 82-year-old speaker of the

House of Representatives, visited Taiwan as a gesture of solidarity, in spite of China's fierce warnings that her arrival would be treated as a grave provocation.

Presumably, Pelosi felt that, by not being cowed, she'd shown China who's still global boss.

And other photo-opportunistic politicians are expected now to imitate her.

What for, though?

In the following days, China intensified its military drills around the Taiwan Strait.

Some experts reckon that the Chinese Communist Party used Pelosi's visit as an excuse to carry out an invasion rehearsal.

Well-play played Nancy.

Meanwhile, the 79-year-old commander-in-chief fumbles on and on.

Last week, Joe Biden's White House tried to redefine the word recession in order to stop America being officially in one.

Joe and his wife Jill visited a flood in Kentucky, which is what presidents and first ladies are meant to do.

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