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LUNCH BREAK READS

A Norwegian adventurer waded into Canada's Hayes River within sight of his destination, and only his malamute climbed out.
Eli Hager shows how criminals skimmed $470 million in SNAP benefits last year while a $215 million fix sat untouched in Congress.
Only one company may be able to check Elon Musk's power in space, and Josh Tyrangiel shows how Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin keeps stumbling.
Ten air-raid alerts in one day didn't close Kyiv's market stalls or wine bars, and the WSJ spent 24 hours under fire alongside the people who stayed.

01 • 25 Minute Read

The New York Times Magazine

Blair Braverman

He Went Out on an Epic Wilderness Adventure. Only His Dogs Came Back

Blair Braverman is one of my favorite writers. She writes about nature and adventure and consequences so poetically, and I was excited to see she published a piece in the New York Times over the weekend. In August 2025, a malamute named Togo climbed out of Canada’s Hayes River and lay on the bank, waiting for his owner who never came out. Steffen Skjottelvik, a 29-year-old Norwegian who idolized his country’s wilderness adventurers, was crossing Canada toward Alaska in stages with a small dog team. When one of his dogs fell ill, Skjottelvik was flown to Peawanuck, a Cree village in northern Ontario, where he fell in love, learned traditional skills from an elder, and decided to settle for good. Locals warned that his next leg, a summer trek along the Hudson Bay coast, was dangerous, but he went anyway. After weeks of mud, bears, and endless river crossings, he reached the Hayes within sight of his destination and told his camera, “We made it, Togo.” Rather than wait six hours for low tide, he waded in. His body was found two miles downstream 10 days later. Togo now lives in Peawanuck with Skjottelvik’s girlfriend, Lilyann Mack.

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02 • 20 Minute Read

ProPublica

Eli Hager

Scammers Are Stealing Millions From Food Stamp Recipients. Congress Could Fix It — but Won’t.

In October 2022, four people paid for nearly 4,700 cans of energy drinks at a San Diego grocery store by swiping 25 food-stamp cards, one after another. The cards held benefits stolen from families nationwide by a Romania-based ring that resold the drinks. Last year, criminals took $470 million from about 990,000 households in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, mostly by skimming the outdated magnetic stripes on benefit cards. Trump administration officials focus instead on fraud by recipients, which federal data puts at about $64 million a year. Swapping in the microchips used on bank cards would stop most theft for an estimated $215 million, and the Secret Service has urged it, but congressional leaders cite budget constraints.

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03 • 49 Minute Read

The Atlantic

Josh Tyrangiel

Choose Your Overlord

As a teenager, Jeff Bezos dreamed of colonies in space, and in 2000 the Amazon founder quietly started a rocket company, Blue Origin. He let it move slowly, while Elon Musk’s SpaceX, founded two years later, raced ahead with cheap reusable rockets and Starlink, a satellite internet network that now funds everything else. Now the two billionaires are racing to build an economy beyond Earth, from moon bases to orbiting data centers for AI. SpaceX’s lead gives Musk powers usually held by governments, and he has used them, refusing Ukraine’s request to extend Starlink over Crimea and threatening to ground the only American capsule that reaches the space station. National security officials see Bezos as the only check on Musk, but Blue Origin keeps stumbling. Its best chance may be the moon, where its lander looks closer to ready than SpaceX’s. Author and staff writer for The Atlantic Josh Tyrangiel writes concisely about this new era of “nobles” and what it means for the rest of us.

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04 • 15 Minute Read

The Wall Street Journal

Anastasiia Malenko, Oksana Grytsenko and Nikita Nikolaienko

See What It’s Like to Be Under Fire in Kyiv, With 10 Air-Raid Alerts in 24 Hours

Before dawn in Kyiv, a dairy farmer named Maria Yaniuk ignores an air-raid alert while setting up her market stall, because she has milk to sell. Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital have made such alerts nearly constant, with 10 in one 24-hour stretch, yet residents keep their routines. A kindergarten moves 4-year-olds into a basement shelter, a mother at a children’s hospital shields her baby from the window, and a theater and rooftop wine bar fill up. The strain shows, though. The bar’s co-owner worries about what happens when people’s bodies finally register years of danger, and a mother whose daughter sleeps in their windowless bathroom says she doesn’t know how much longer they can live this way. After midnight, a missile barrage hits the city. The day’s strikes have killed at least four people, and more drones are on the way.

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He told his dog "We made it." He never made it home.

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