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Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator.

Every week we take a look at some of the most important and intriguing stories from the issue with the writers behind them.

I'm Laura Prendergars, the Spectator's executive editor.

This week has the Biden presidency stalled or crashed. Plus, should we welcome or

fear the metaverse? And finally, is the idea of buy now, pay later, financially precarious for young people.

First up, in our cover story this week, Freddie Gray assesses the state of the Biden presidency.

With steadily lowering approval ratings, a disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal,

and this week's failure of the Democrats to hold on to the Virginia governorship,

how much trouble is the U.S.'s oldest inaugurated president in.

Freddie joins me now along with Emily Tamkin, the U.S. editor of The New Statesman and co-host of the World Review podcast.

Freddie, you say in your piece that Biden's been in office for less than a year and his presidency is already a catalogue of crises.

What seems to be going wrong?

I think there's a lot going wrong.

And I think the main problem is Joe Biden himself and it's sort of

been called a kind of right wing talking point to talk about how he is and whether he's mentally

capable of being president but I think it's becoming increasingly obvious that he's not he's not

actually capable he's not performing at a very high level and it's not as if he's got this brilliant administration

behind him that is across everything. There's a lot of crises. There's a crisis at the border.

There's a crisis with the economy. There's a crisis with COVID. There's all sorts of things

going wrong. And he's not actually performing very well as the president. And this is showing in the polls

...