LUNCH BREAK READS

Writer Edward Abel Smith spent years writing to and visiting Robin Garbutt, a Yorkshire postmaster convicted of killing his wife, and still can't say whether he did it.
Four prominent Kenyan women runners have been killed in three years, and Sam Borden reports on why winning makes champions like Agnes Ngetich a target.
A decade after a $330,000 lab-grown burger promised to change dinner, Erin Somers goes looking for cultivated meat and finds a pig named Dawn.
Britain's shooting lobby wants permission to shoot London's 50,000 wild parakeets, and David Wingrave asks who is responsible for the birds in the first place.

01 • 21 Minute Read

Longreads

Edward Abel Smith

Have I Befriended a Murderer? story image

In 2021, author Edward Abel Smith found a file at Britain’s National Archives on Diana Garbutt, beaten to death in 2010 in her bed above the post office she ran with her husband, Robin, in a Yorkshire village. Robin said armed robbers had hit the shop that morning, but prosecutors argued he invented the robbery to cover the killing and missing money, and a jury convicted him. Smith began writing to Robin in prison, then visiting and taking his calls. He found sloppy police work and a theft motive built on Post Office software behind hundreds of wrongful convictions, while Britain’s miscarriage-of-justice review body kept rejecting Robin’s appeals. When Smith suggested Robin might be guilty, Robin responded by mailing him his only copy of his case files. Smith can’t tell whether that was candor or calculation, yet when his daughter asked if Robin was his friend, he said yes.

Read the Story →

02 • 35 Minute Read

ESPN	Sam Borden

They run. They win. The danger grows.

Kenyan women marathon champions story image

Agnes Ngetich was a barefoot teenager in rural Kenya when a scout spotted her, and at 25 she is a world-record holder. In Kenya, that success also makes her a target. Rebecca Cheptegei, a marathoner set on fire in 2024, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend, was the fourth prominent female runner killed in three years, each allegedly by a partner. Agents describe men who prey on winning women to control their earnings, and families say police ignored their reports. The man charged in the 2021 killing of world-record holder Agnes Tirop vanished after being granted bail. Athletics Kenya, the national federation, counts only six athletes affected by gender-based violence since 2021. Runner Joan Chelimo, who houses Ngetich at her training camp, fields calls from abused women almost daily. Ngetich knows each win draws more people who want her money, and she runs anyway.

Read the Story →

03 • 30 Minute Read

Harper's Magazine

Erin Somers

Where’s the Beef?

On August 5, 2013, two tasters in London shared a $330,000 burger grown from cow cells by Dutch scientist Mark Post, who predicted lab-grown meat would reach stores within a decade. About 140 startups and $3 billion in investment followed, but costs stayed high, funding dried up, and several states banned the product. Writer Erin Somers, a vegetarian for nearly 20 years, set out to taste it anyway. In North Carolina, the world’s largest cultivated-meat plant went bankrupt before producing anything. In San Francisco she finally ate a meatball made partly from fat cells grown from a pig named Dawn. It tasted fine but made her nauseous, less from the flavor than from knowing how it was made. Shoppers at a California tasting were lukewarm, and Somers argues the industry has retreated from fighting climate change to niche novelties.

Read the Story →

04 • 23 Minute Read

The Baffler

David Wingrave

The Pollycrisis

Every evening at dusk, thousands of bright-green ring-necked parakeets descend on a line of poplars in a southeast London cemetery. Native to the Himalayan foothills, the birds likely descend from escaped and released pets, and their numbers have grown from about 1,000 in the 1980s to an estimated 50,000. This year Britain’s main shooting association asked the government to add them to the list of birds anyone can shoot with a landowner’s permission, citing threats to orchards and to native birds that nest in tree hollows. Defenders say the harms are overblown and the panic echoes hostility toward human migrants. Writer David Wingrave argues the fight exposes the weakness of rigid labels like “native” and “invader,” which treat nature as fixed. He says the better question is what people want, since humans brought the parakeets and are responsible for them. The government has yet to rule.

Read the Story →

Support Lunch Break Reads

If you look forward to these four reads every day, consider joining the Lunch Club. It keeps LBR going.

Join the Lunch Club →

Have I Befriended a Murderer?

LUNCH BREAK READS

Other Stories Worth Reading

Keep Reading

Lunch Break Reads