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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Each week we choose three pieces from the magazine

and ask their writers to read them aloud. I'm Oscar Gredminton and on the podcast this week.

Sam Leith explains how he's been keeping up friendships through online Scrabble.

Lionel Shriver reads her column on how to offend your customers.

And Angus Colwell read his arts lead on the VNA Dundee's Tartan exhibition.

Up first, Sam Leith. The internet, as we all know,

it's a place for rage and hate. It's a free fire zone in which something even as apparently

innocuous as Facebook, original use case, posting family snaps via Gran, ends up incubating

armed insurrection and spreading 5G conspiracy theories.

But what if there was some corner of it untouched by death threats, disinformation and

the baleful influence of Lydemia Putin's troll farms? What if there was still some corner

of the World Wide Web which lived up to its original promise of connecting people

who would not otherwise be connected, and what if, once connected, they were nothing but

agreeable to each other? Be of good cheer. That corner exists. Not everyone is arguing

with Owen Jones and India Willoughby. Not everyone is flaming Lee Anderson,

Suella Bravman, fighting gloy-eyed Bitcoin cultists, all railing against Elon Musk. Some of us are

playing Scrabble. Playing Scrabble on a smartphone out may not change the world, not in a visible,

glorious, concrete way. It may not alter

the balance of power in Congress or on the battlefield in Ukraine, but just from time to time,

it must cultivate our jardin. And contrary those who believe that screens are isolating us

from one another and fraying the social fabric, here's a way in which they are not.

...