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LUNCH BREAK READS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2026

Happy Hump Day!

Four great stories (including a new Texas Monthly investigation!!) to get you through your lunch break today.

  • The man who built the modern Southern Baptist Convention died last year at 94, months after secretly settling a decades-long sexual abuse lawsuit. The survivors who exposed him did not outlive the reforms they fought for.

  • China has 740 million gamers and censorship rules vague enough to ban almost anything. Most game developers quietly comply. One Swedish studio refused, and its biggest game has never launched there.

  • From $159,000 recovery chambers to cortisol-timed protein schedules, pro athletes are treating aging like an engineering problem. A lot of them are winning.

  • David Attenborough turns 100 this week. His voice is one of the most documented in history and now one of the most cloned, used without permission to narrate political disinformation.

Enjoy your lunch.

Brett

01 • ~48 Minute Read
Texas Monthly Robert Downen
He Remade the Southern Baptist Convention in His Image. Then Came the Abuse Allegations.
Paul Pressler was the architect of the Southern Baptist Convention's conservative takeover in the 1980s and a quiet Republican kingmaker who helped bind white evangelicals to the GOP. For decades, accusations of sexual abuse shadowed him, dismissed or suppressed by institutions that owed him their power. When his former youth group member Duane Rollins finally sued him in 2017, it cracked open a scandal revealing systemic abuse across 47,000 churches.
Read the story (E-mail Required) →
02 • ~20 Minute Read
The Guardian Oliver Holmes
No cults, no politics, no ghouls: how China censors the video game world
China has 740 million gamers and a domestic market worth over $45 billion, making it the world's largest. Foreign developers who want in must navigate censorship rules so vague they function as a permanent threat rather than a fixed line. No skeletons, no realistic blood, no cults, no time travel, no political choice. Companies including Blizzard, Riot, and GOG have altered games or punished players to preserve access. Swedish developer Paradox refused to compromise and still has not launched its flagship game Stellaris in China five years after announcing it. As self-censorship becomes the path of least resistance, an entire generation is learning about the world through games that China now shapes.
Read the Story →
03 • ~22 Minute Read
The New York Times Magazine Devin Gordon
The Longevity Secrets Helping Athletes Blow Past the Limits of Age
Wade Boggs drank 73 beers on a flight in his mid-30s and still batted over .300. That era is gone. Today's aging athletes are round-the-clock recovery operations: biomechanical assessments four times a year, $159,500 human-charging stations, nine-step pregame protocols, and nutritionists who test cortisol levels and time protein intake to the hour. LeBron James at 41 plays alongside his 21-year-old son. Lindsey Vonn, 41, nearly lost her leg at the Olympics in February and is not ruling out the 2030 Games. The driving force is money: NBA salaries averaging $12 million a year have turned body optimization from an elite habit into an arms race that has now trickled into consumer wearables worth $314 billion.
Unlocked for LBR Readers →
04 • ~18 Minute Read
The Ringer Danny Chau
David Attenborough and the Voice That Revealed a Planet
David Attenborough turns 100 on May 8. His voice, a half-hushed whisper developed over 70 years of documentary work, is now both a scientific instrument and a moral one. A linguist who spent 50 hours analyzing his speech found that his accent relaxed as his career deepened, evolving from cut-glass BBC formality into something closer to theatrical authority. The voice has become more powerful as it has aged. It has also become a target: AI companies have cloned it without permission, using it to spread political disinformation. Attenborough's new Netflix documentary traces nearly 50 years with a single gorilla group, and his most recent work on the ocean is his most direct statement yet about environmental destruction and his own mortality.
Read the story →

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