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Happy Hump Day, Lunch Club!
I wanted to start off today’s edition with a heartfelt thank you. When I started kicking around this idea during the pandemic, I thought it would be a fun way to connect with other folks who love reading these deep-dive stories. I had fun, but ultimately life got in the way.
I was busy, but Lunch Break Reads sat in the back of my mind. When we relaunched last year, I was excited to get back into it, and it has been an incredible ride since then. And that is all thanks to you. I love showing up in your inbox every day with interesting stories, and I love hearing your suggestions, notes of thanks, and recommendations.
So, thank you for being a reader of the newsletter. My inbox is always open if you want to chat: [email protected].
As always, we have a great selection for your lunch break. Hope you enjoy!
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Support the Club
Lunch Break Reads is supported by our great readers. If you enjoy the curation, consider buying me a cup of coffee.
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The New York Times
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Matt Richtel
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Scientific papers describing new opioid compounds are being mined by illicit chemists, and the consequences are fatal. When a University of Colorado student died in 2023 after inhaling what he thought were quaaludes, the drug that killed him was N-desethyl etonitazene, a synthetic opioid ten times more potent than fentanyl. Investigators traced it to a 2021 academic paper meant to predict which dangerous compounds might appear next. That effort to stay ahead of the drug supply may have put a new killer on the map. The case reveals a troubling loop at the heart of modern drug research.
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The Atlantic
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Luis Parrales
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Data from Pew, Gallup, and the General Social Survey consistently show Gen Z as the least religious American generation, but a quieter countertrend is visible in certain Catholic parishes and college campuses. Conversion numbers at some urban parishes and universities are roughly doubling this Easter, and weekly attendance at a Greenwich Village church discussion group has grown from single digits to around 150. Demographers caution that these pockets of renewal cannot reverse broader secular trends. Still, the communities themselves are changing, drawing young professionals through philosophy, prayer, and the promise of belonging.
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The Yale Review
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Michel Chaouli
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A literature professor and committed non-finisher examines the guilt that trails readers who abandon novels. The pressure to finish, he argues, comes not from social norms but from narrative architecture: endings generate meaning, retroactively ordering everything that preceded them. Without a conclusion, there is no logic, no way to make sense of what a story was about. Drawing on Edith Wharton and Walter Benjamin, he builds a case that we read fiction partly to borrow a kind of meaning our own lives stubbornly refuse to provide. The unfinished novel haunts precisely because the end still exerts its pull.
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Harper's Magazine
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Gaby Del Valle
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The American Conservation Coalition pitches itself as a Rooseveltian alternative to the environmental left, gathering young conservative activists at a Tennessee state park for kayaking, archery, and panels on "energy dominance." Despite close ties to Trump cabinet members and a seat at the White House table, the group has watched the administration gut the EPA, weaken the Endangered Species Act, slash National Park Service staff, and roll back clean water rules. The ACC scored modest wins, but its leadership mostly deflects when pressed on the contradictions. The conservation, it turns out, is mostly rhetorical.
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