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Novelist Adam Johnson meets Kenji Fujimoto, a man who became the Dear Leader’s cook, confidant, and court jester: “Many people envied me because I was a favorite of Kim Jong-il. At the parties, I poured sake for Shogun-sama, but Shogun-sama also poured sake for me, which was very rare. Every time Shogun-sama said to me, […]

A 1982 Inside Sports profile of Glenn Burke, one of the first professional athletes to come out. Burke died in 1995: “Burke walks out to the sunshine of the patio, where there is enough quiet to reflect. ‘People say I should still be playing,’ he says. ‘But I didn’t want to make other people uncomfortable, […]

This week’s Longreads Member pick is “The American Nonconformist in the Age of the Commercialization of Dissent,” a 1992 essay by Thomas Frank from The Baffler, the magazine he cofounded with Keith White in 1988.  Frank writes:  “In republishing this bit of juvenilia from 1992—my very first exploration of an idea that I reworked and reconsidered […]

Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey and Olympic gold medalist Kayla Harrison were sexually abused when they were young. What happened, and how they healed: “The bad cop finally got through to her when she won the U.S. Open in 2007 and felt absolutely nothing and told him she was quitting for good. He invited her to […]

How two best friends rehabilitated the Ultimate Fighting Championship franchise, and what’s coming next as the popularity of mixed martial arts expands globally: “The UFC has border-hopped since 2007, first into Europe and Canada, then Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, and the Middle East. The next step is both simple and excessively difficult. Any international fan […]

On Argentina’s violent—and often corrupt—soccer fan clubs: “The first murder spawned by Argentinean soccer can be traced to 1924, when a Boca fan shot a Uruguayan rival during a tango-style showdown outside a luxury hotel in Montevideo. Sometime in the 1950s, the fan clubs organized for self-defense. La Doce took its fierce, fistfighting form in […]

A writer and his wife participate in a centuries-old Scandinavian tradition known as “Wife-Carrying,” a sport where male competitors carry a female teammate while racing through an obstacle course: “And then my wife and I are 15 yards up the hill, and I am breathing hard, making it work. This isn’t so bad, I think. […]

[Not single-page] More men are getting diagnosed with eating disorders, but are struggling to receive help: “As recently as a decade ago, clinicians believed that only 5 percent of anorexics were male. Current estimates suggest it’s closer to 20 percent and rising fast: More men are getting ill, and more are being diagnosed. (One well-regarded […]

A man with $90,000 in debt makes some hard decisions about his life—starting with a trip to Kosovo for an IT job: “Of course, all I understood at the time was JOB INTERVIEW and VIENNA. Prior to my application, I had never heard of the OSCE, and I knew next to nothing about Kosovo. My […]

How timing and creativity can reignite interest in a toy: “Not long ago, three inventors—toiling at home, unaware of one another’s existence—set out to reimagine the pogo. What was so sacred about that ungainly steel coil? they wondered. Why couldn’t you make a pogo stick brawny enough for a 250-pound adult? And why not vault […]