Horse racing can be an unusually dangerous profession for both the jockey and the horse: Riding a half-ton animal at nearly 40 miles per hour means your fate depends on the health and performance of both athletes. And the horse can be at risk of catastrophic injury if the jockey doesn’t have the required physical fitness to maintain proper technique and lightning-quick reflexes.
But new wearable technology and advances in sports medicine are enabling everyone involved in the sport of horse racing to identify risks earlier and prevent injuries to horses and jockeys alike.
In order to find out more about both of these athletes, I took a trip to Belmont Park, to watch competitive horses train and to speak with Dr. Sara Langsam, an equine veterinarian and chair of the American Association of Equine Practitioners Racing Committee. And to learn about the jockey side of the equation, I talked to Michaela Keener, a jockey health researcher at University of Kentucky, and ReyLu Gutiérrez, a jockey who has started in over 6,000 races.
Congressional Democrats outside the US Capitol on May 21, 2026. | Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
With the 2026 midterm elections fast approaching, polling increasingly suggests that the GOP is in for a bad time. As the Iran war drives up inflation and fuel prices, Republicans are on the back foot not just in swing states like Michigan, but in redder parts of the map: Iowa, Texas, and maybe even Kansas, among others. (Not to mention Georgia and North Carolina.)
It’s shaping up to be a Democratic wave, in other words, and a major repudiation of President Donald Trump. According to Sarah Longwell, the publisher of political news site the Bulwark, there’s a clear reason why this is the cycle that things seem to be falling apart for Trump, who has dodged scandals and bad poll numbers before. “The average person is often voting on instinctual things,” she explains, “and those instincts are a lot of your animalistic desires for things to be okay materially.” And for many voters right now, things are not okay materially.
Longwell would know: She regularly speaks with voters for her podcast, The Focus Group, and she’s the author of the new book How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time.
Longwell talked with Vox’s Astead Herndon for a special live recording of the America, Actually podcast at the Texas Tribune Festival earlier this month about why voters are both more and less complicated than punditry sometimes suggests, what the future holds for the Republican Party post-Trump, and the lesson Democrats need to learn to capitalize on their wins.
Below is an excerpt of Astead’s conversation with Longwell, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.
One of the themes in the book is to talk to voters like real adults. What does that mean?
There was a long period of time in our history where the artifice of politics was part of the performance of politics.
You could give a good speech. You’d do a debate. Those are not the rules of politics in this communications environment anymore. Every single one of you, if you’re a Bulwark person, you interact with me. I am in your ear, and we’re having a conversation.
We have a parasocial relationship. I walked in here and met a bunch of people, and they were like, “I feel like I know you.” And people want to feel like that about their political leaders now. And so they want to know what makes you tick. Are you a real person? And so the artifice of a debate on CNN is starting to feel really stupid, no offense to CNN.
People demand more now. And a lot of it is just that artifice is falling away for voters. Donald Trump understood that as a person who had been in people’s living rooms as a performer. Democratic politicians still have not figured it out.
One of the things that comes through in both the book and I think the work that we both do is how voters don’t always fit into those neat ideological boxes.
I always tell the story about when I was at the Iowa caucuses, and I remember in 2019 in the Democratic primary, someone telling me they were stuck between Bernie [Sanders] and [former New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg, and asking, “How did you get there?”
And what was the answer?
I think the short answer was they liked a strong guy where they knew what he believed in. And they did not care which side of that coin that was, as long as it felt consistent and something they could put their hands around.
If ideology is not the controlling paradigm for voters, how should we think about the different ways people are sorting themselves right now?
My answer is genuinely not to sort them as much. This is the reason people say things like, “It’s the economy, stupid,” and then everybody gets bored with that answer, and they want to talk about 10 other things because they’re like, “Well, that’s so straightforward.”
But I try in the book to say it really is about improving people’s material well-being and ensuring their safety. So you go back to: What are the most human things that people want? They want to be able to afford gas. They want a job. They want a job [where] they think that they can go up the ladder.
They want their kids to get a good education. Then they want to be safe. They want to know that they’re safe in their community. They want to know they’re safe in the places that they go. And Donald Trump and Republicans really do understand: People vote with weird animal instincts.
Now, I bet a lot of the people in this room are college-educated suburban voters, but the average voter in a general election is a 55-year-old white guy without a college degree.
The average person is often voting on instinctual things, and those instincts are a lot of your animalistic desires for things to be okay materially — your cost of health care, and then for you to be safe. And so if you think about those base-level desires and then think about what Democrats spend most of their time talking about, you’re like, “Is that the thing that captures all these people?”
When I watch Democrats as somebody who’s an immigrant into the Democratic ecosystem, there’s a lot of, like, “And you get a policy, and you get a policy, and you get a policy.” And I don’t really understand that because everybody needs cheaper gas.
Everybody needs groceries that they can afford. And so talking about the things that unite us or that everybody needs, to me, is the secret sauce for how Democrats should think about policy.
Three years ago, Democrats thought that being against January 6th was a thing that united everybody. There was a belief that pro-democracy arguments were going to unite people across ideology. Why did that fail in 2024?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot as Trump gets terrible poll after terrible poll, and this is my point.
The coup, all of the horrible things he said about women, all of the lawsuits — I mean, he told everybody an election was stolen. Why is he underwater right now? Because of gas prices, because of a war in Iran, because the negative personal consequences of his policies are hitting people.
I know that it frustrates people. I’m so aware of the frustration where people are like, “Why are people so selfish? Why don’t they think about the bigger picture of democracy?” And one of the things I try not to do is magic words — consultant stuff, because a lot of consultants do that. They’re like, “Say freedom,” and “Say affordability.”
There’s nothing to back it up. But the one magic word I do think that Democrats should start using is “America,” and swap it in for “democracy.” And the reason is, voters practice democracy in America by its individual things.
They practice free speech. They like rule of law. They like checks and balances. So they like the elements of democracy, but they don’t think about them up here as democracy. And also the word democracy now is very polarized, right? Republicans think that Democrats are a threat to democracy because they stole the 2020 election. And Democrats think Republicans are a threat to democracy because they lied about the election being stolen and then tried to overturn the entire government.
I think one side of that equation is more right than the other. But I think that’s why it didn’t work.
I want to look ahead. Our show focuses on building a roadmap for American politics without Trump, and part of that question has been about Republicans.
They have made themselves into a new kind of America First-esque party. But what does that mean without Trump at the center of it? When you’re in your focus groups, is it clear what values or principles Republicans believe in besides what Donald Trump says to them?
Absolutely not. They don’t have anything. This is why I wrote the book. I wrote the book because we have 2026, we have 2028, and we have 2032.
By 2032, there’s going to be a new census, and things are going to get worse for Democrats. Hear me on this. People are not grokking this yet. The map — people are leaving California for Texas, people are leaving New York for Florida, and it’s just going to get harder for Democrats to win if this same trajectory that we’re currently on holds.
But there is a generational opportunity right now, and it’s why I desperately wanted to bring this book and get it out there. The Republican Party at this moment is as hollowed out as … Donald Trump is going to leave it in shambles. There is no Trump heir who can do what Trump does, who has the longstanding parasocial relationship with voters where they give him this blank check that other people don’t get.
But my concern is that 2026 will go really well and that Democrats will say, “See? It’s fine. Everybody likes us.” They don’t.
This was the big mistake in 2022. The midterms were extrapolated [to signal] Biden’s re-election, and those were not the same thing.
They are not the same thing. And again, the average voter is a 55-year-old white man without a college degree. And you can just hold that in your head and picture that guy and say, “Do we have candidates who can appeal to that guy?”
I was being annoying when I was flying here, tweeting things, and there’s a new poll out for [Pennsylvania Gov.] Josh Shapiro. He is beating his Republican opponent by 21 points in the poll right now. This is the largest swing state in the country, and Democrats hate Josh Shapiro.
Hate feels a little strong. I think the left doesn’t like Josh Shapiro. I don’t think that’s the whole party.
That’s a good point.
I’ll just say, as a slight Josh Shapiro stan, perhaps I feel more than most people’s antipathy to the idea of Josh Shapiro running. I get a lot of people just being like, “Absolutely not. He’s a corporate centrist. We would never consider him. And also he’s Jewish slash Zionist.”
And a lot of this is Twitter discourse, but it feels like he doesn’t get the same buzz or interest, which seems insane to me when you’ve got somebody that popular in such a big, important state that Trump was able to win twice.
The electoral argument for the Josh Shapiros of the world is clear.
Twenty-one points in Pennsylvania at any rate is impressive, but let’s use him as an example, because I do think it speaks to where some Democrats have gone in the last couple years. The polling will tell you that the majority of Democrats want to see their party reshift its relationship with Israel and want to see things like an arms embargo.
Polling would tell you that the majority of Democrats believe that they shouldn’t be taking corporate money, or that things like AIPAC money are bad. How does a Josh Shapiro — let’s use him as an avatar. … Is that compatible with where the Democratic base is right now, even if it’s clearly compatible with Pennsylvania?
The way that you just said it doesn’t sound compatible. But I don’t think that it’s incompatible.
This is a book about what the voters think, and the voters want a new relationship with Israel, hands down. Without question. They want America to reevaluate our relationship with Israel. And the next Democratic presidential candidate is going to have to do that.
And I have a theory about this. I do think that the 2028 nominee is very likely to be a Jewish person who is highly critical of Israel, because I think that it helps to heal the deep divide right now on this issue within the Democratic Party.
Now, do I think it’s more likely that that is the very handsome Jon Ossoff? I kind of do. But I just … a big part of this book is, “Don’t you want to win? Don’t you guys want to win?” Like, do you want to win more than you want to be right about everything?
Hier ist das diesmalige Heftblättern – unter erschwerten Umständen (Messelärm…), aber mit großem Enthusiasmus aufgenommen von unserem Autoren Stephan Freundorfer und Jörg Langer. Dass wir ein, zwei “Regieanweisungen” aus dem laufenden Interview heraus drin gelassen haben, ist kein Versehen, sondern Teil der Atmosphäre…
Wie üblich bei diesem Format, besprechen wir das aktuelle Heft (hier erhältlich) und lassen auch die eine oder andere Anekdote unserem Gehirnarchiv entspringen. Viel Spaß!
Michigan Democratic congressional candidate Will Lawrence speaks with reporters on September 14, 2026, in Mason, Michigan. | Nic Antaya/Getty Images
William Lawrence is a Democrat running to represent Michigan’s Lansing-area Seventh Congressional District with a campaign that largely focuses on data centers and affordability. It’s not an unusual story in 2026 — but not long ago, Lawrence was cutting his teeth in progressive politics as a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, primarily focused on organizing around the climate crisis.
His arc, from progressive activist to politician, is emblematic of a bigger trend, as a wave of millennial progressives in midterm races across the country try to lean into issues that have broader, more immediate appeal with voters.
But that arc also raises big questions about the left’s changing priorities. In a recent interview for Vox’s podcast and video series America, Actually, host Astead Herndon spoke with Lawrence about his past activism and how he has pivoted. “It can sometimes feel like…folks hop from issue to issue, whether it’s climate, even anti-AI right now, without those things being solved,” Herndon told Lawrence.
According to Lawrence, “that’s the reality of the time. It seems like everything is unraveling, and it is because the whole social, economic, political compact is being renegotiated, not just in this country, but on a global stage.” Still, Lawrence said, that earlier organizing shapes how he sees different challenges today.
The two also discussed whether opposition to data centers and AI has wide, regular-voter appeal in places like Michigan and how Lawrence went from hopeless and disengaged to regaining a sense of agency through organizing.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.
You started in Sunrise and were at the forefront of a young progressive movement that was aligned at that time — in 2018, 2019, and I think still — with progressive members of Congress like Rashida Tlaib or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
I remember reporting about Sunrise at the time. The goal was to elect a Bernie Sanders, but the other goal was to have the party largely embrace things like a Green New Deal. How would you grade the efforts of the climate movement of that time, looking back?
I think we did some things very well.
We put climate jobs and justice at the top of the agenda for the incoming Biden administration. I think the Bernie-Biden task force is an often overlooked but very important chapter of that whole story, where Bernie and Biden both understood they had to bring their people to the table.
And that’s how Build Back Better got negotiated. We fought hard for Build Back Better, and ultimately came up two votes shy in the United States Senate.
Do you see that as a success or a failure of the climate movement?
I think Build Back Better was a success in coming to the table and negotiating, from the Green New Deal to Build Back Better, and then what we ended up with was the Inflation Reduction Act after it passed the final filter, which was Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. At the time, now, how I felt about it was, this is historic. This is the largest investment in green jobs and infrastructure in United States history. I know how hard it was to get here. I’m tremendously proud of the work that I did and so many others did.
Just in my district alone, we’ve delivered $26 billion in investment for manufacturing and sustainability because of the Inflation Reduction Act. But at the time, we knew that this is maybe 5 percent or 10 percent of what we need in scope. And now we’re experiencing the consequences of that.
Obviously, we still have a very volatile economy. We still lack energy security because we now have closed the Strait of Hormuz. We’re still too dependent on a global oil market, and we could use many more investments in solar and other kinds of renewable energy than we have now.
And ultimately, it wasn’t enough for the Biden-Harris administration to be able to win reelection, because people didn’t feel it enough in their pocketbooks.
Why do you think Democrats are talking less about climate?
I think it’s the intensity of the crises that we face. It feels like we’re falling through midair, after the end of all of the constitutional protections, the rule of law, and the economic security that people had previously enjoyed.
There are a lot of very acute and urgent crises, and I think that that has bumped climate, which is a super massive but also somewhat slow-moving crisis, a little bit lower on the priority list just in terms of what comes up for people on the Hill.
You went back to Michigan to focus on housing and advocacy. Did that make you think a little differently about the national work you were doing?
I think it’s fair to say that when I was younger, I got very focused on this climate issue, and I was very focused on it because it is this existential crisis we all face.
But it was after the pandemic that I wanted to bring my work closer to home. I wanted to do the work of putting down roots in the place that had raised me and make my life there. And in seeking to organize there, it was clear that we needed an in to organize that was more immediate.
“I believe in the agency of regular people taking charge of our own lives and working together to build a better future.”
More immediate than the Green New Deal.
Than the Green New Deal or than the looming climate crisis. People know that that’s an issue, but they’re like, “I’ve gotta pay rent at the end of the month.” And as an organizer, I believe that you have to listen to people, you have to hear what’s going on for them, and then work on issues that have the potential to bring people together.
Housing is one of those issues. Whether you’re in the city of Lansing, whether you’re in small towns, urban, rural, suburban, young or old, everybody can agree that the rent is too damn high and it’s too hard to buy a home anymore.
Were you surprised Trump won the state in 2024?
No.
Why not?
Because I saw it all unfold. We hoped to deliver more through the Biden-Harris administration than we ultimately did through Build Back Better. We didn’t deliver as much to relieve the economic anxiety that people were feeling. And then I do believe that the war and the genocide in Gaza and our blank check to allow that to happen with our money and our tax dollars destroyed the Democratic coalition that had been assembled from 2017 through 2020 for the purpose of beating Trump.
I just saw that unfolding over the course of the whole year, just like a slow-motion train wreck.
I want to ask locally, what do you think is most important in this race: housing, data centers, or pushing back against Donald Trump?
If I had to choose, I’d say data centers because that’s where people in the district are finding some common ground across the spectrum — in fighting back against the concentrated power in Silicon Valley, which has been fully enabled by [incumbent Rep.] Tom Barrett and Donald Trump.
So you’re saying that’s the issue that allows you to create cross-ideological coalitions?
Yeah.
Our last question is, just thinking through the scope of your career and the kind of progressive work: It can sometimes feel like folks hop from issue to issue, whether it’s climate, even anti-AI right now, without those things being solved, right?
Like, we still have a climate crisis. The rent is still too high. All of these things are still happening. How am I to trust that AI is the crisis of our time when I’ve heard so many crises of our time?
Some have called it a polycrisis — overlapping crises.
That’s the reality of the time. It seems like everything is unraveling, and it is because the whole social, economic, political compact is being renegotiated, not just in this country, but on a global stage. I don’t think it serves us to lie about that. I mean, here’s the reality, folks.
Everything is up in the air. Does it feel like you’re falling through midair? It’s because we are. All the old protections, all the old agreements have been chopped up. So we have got to come together. This is what I believe in more than anything, if there is a through line…I believe in the agency of regular people taking charge of our own lives and working together to build a better future.
That’s what I learned as an organizer, and that’s what gave me hope actually, at a time when I was doomer-ing in my younger years. And I told you, I wanted to just drop out of society and all that. It was seeing that regular people have come together before, and they’ve won a better future for their kids and grandkids, that gave me a path to follow in.
It does feel like a powerless time, I have to tell you. And a lot of this AI revolution, to your point about control or about agency. We’ve talked to so many people who just think that these things are happening to them, rather than feeling that they are participating in the changes afoot.
But you’re telling a kinda hopeful story.
I’m a hopeful guy. I was angry too, even when I got into this race. I was angry especially about the wars. But then in campaigning, I’ve met so many people across the district, old friends, new friends, and they give me a lot of hope because you just see the way that people are already performing miracles on a daily basis.
Retro-Gamer-Autorin Nina Schild begann schon in frühen Jahren, Adventures zu spielen – sie lernte Lesen mit Maniac Mansion und fing an, nackte Frauen zu malen, nachdem sie als kleines Kind Leisure Suit Larry spielte. Ihr Mann erteilt ihr beim gemeinsamen Adventure-Spielen Redeverbot, da sie sonst selbst die abstrusesten Rätsel in Rekordzeit löst und ihm den Spaß kaputtmacht. Diese und etliche mehr Enthüllungen findet ihr in Hardy Heßdörers Gespräch mit Nina auf der Gamescom 2026:
Jahrzehnte nach dem Original hat Inin das Remaster Apidya Specal herausgebracht. Programmiert hat es Stefan Becker, und den hat Jörg Langer auf der Gamescom 2026 am Retro-Gamer-Stand interviewt. Viel Spaß mit dem kompakten Eindruck zur Entstehung sowie der Frage, wieso, bei allen Verbesserungen, keine Rückspulfunktion enthalten ist.
Am Stand von Retro Gamer kommen Vorserienmodelle des neuen Joysticks von OSA-Stick.com zum Einsatz. Und wenn doch mal eine Mikroschalter den Geist aufgibt, ist (zumindest auf der Gamescom) der Entwickler der OSA-Sticks, Frank Niggemann, nicht weit, und repariert das Ding in 3 Minuten…
Ein witziges Fundstück von der Gamescom 2026: Factor-Five-Urgestein Willi Bäcker zeigt Retro Gamer einen Bug/Cheat in der Mega-Drive-Version von Turrican, den er erst kürzlich entdeckt hat. Er sei “zu 98% reproduzierbar”, erklärt er uns dann noch off-camera. Im kurzen Video seht ihr den Bug, und wie er per Smartbomb an der richtigen Stelle erzeugt wird.
In regelmäßigen Abständen gilt: Retro-Gamer-Leser fragen (vor allem auf unseren Social-Media-Kanälen), und Retro-Gamer-Autoren antworten. Dieses Mal sind das Hardy Heßdörfer und Jörg Langer: Willkommen also zu unserer neuesten Q&A-Runde, das wir dieses Mal auf der Gamescom 2026 aufgenommen haben!
Auf der Gamescom 2026 hatten wir unseren GamersGlobal- und RetroGamer-Autoren Michael Hengst am Stand – ein Urgestein des deutschen Spielejournalismus. Mit Jörg Langer redet er unter anderem darüber, wieso er von der Branche enttäuscht ist und dies seine allerletzte Gamescom sein wird. Viel Spaß beim Ansehen!
Passend zum großen Evolution-Artikel in Retro Gamer 4/26 namens Die Chroniken von Zelda führt euch Hardy Heßdörfer in diesem rund 20-minütigen Video launig durch alle Serienteile der ruhmreichen Action-RPG-Serie.
Sollte oben bei euch eine Fehlermeldung stehen statt das Video (ein Problem des Safari-Browsers), klickt einfach auf “Video auf YouTube ansehen”. Viel Spaß!
Last week, I discussed the miniDSP UMIK-2 USB measurement microphone and as I mentioned then, it's not often that we see much discussion about these devices among audiophiles even though they are important in helping us chase down sonic problems and of course to calibrate the sound system. To me, that calibration process is an essential part of achieving a truly "accurate" sound system once we
Liebe Retrofreunde, entweder zum Anfixen geeignet, wenn ihr das Heft noch nicht habt, oder aber zum gemütlichen Mitlesen: Egal wie ihr unser regelmäßiges Heftblättern nutzt, wünschen euch Anatol und Jörg ebenso viel Spaß beim Zusehen, wie wir bei der Aufnahme hatten! Wer das Heft als ePaper oder Einzelheft bestellen möchte, wird im Shop fündig.
Das Video ist nur leicht geschnitten und damit 53 Minuten lang, aber wir wollen ja nicht durchhetzen. Also zieht euch ein frisches Bier oder einen Tee oder einen Kaffee oder ein Glas Rotwein oder was auch immer ihr gerne trinkt (wir akzeptieren auch kristallaktiviertes Wasser) und macht es euch gemütlich
Solltet ihr oben eine Fehlermeldung bekommen statt das Video zum Abspielen (das ist browserabhängig), klickt einfach auf “Video auf YouTube ansehen”.
Im aktuellen Heft Retro Gamer 2/26 haben wir einen vierseitigen Praxistest zum Commodore 64 Ultimate – hier ist das zugehörige Video, in dem euch Jörg Langer knapp 20 Minuten lang den Wunder-Brotkasten vorführt. Viel Spaß!
Sollte statt des Videos bei euch eine Fehlermeldung erscheinen hier drunter, klickt bitte beherzt auf “Video auf YouTube ansehen”.
Manchmal dauert es etwas länger, und so ist der in diesem Heftblättern besprochene Retro Gamer 1/26 bereits rund zehn Wochen im Handel (und fast elf bei den Abonnenten). Aber dafür haben wir einen ganz besonderen Partner für Jörg Langer dieses Mal: Spielejournalisten-Urgestein Roland Austinat, der eigentlich in San Francisco lebt und demzufolge eher selten in der Redaktion vorbei kommen kann. Viel Spaß!
Falls ihr im folgenden die Meldung “Fehler 153” seht (das hängt von eurem Browser ab), klickt bitte einfach auf den großen Link “Video auf YouTube ansehen”.
Eine knappe Stunde lang blättern Hardy Heßdörfer und Jörg Langer für euch im Retro-Gamer-Sonderheft Die 90er Jahre – das über 150 aktuelle Spieletests von 90er-Klassikern enthält. Das Heft war im Retro-Gamer-Shop direkt zum Start ausverkauft im Dezember 2025, in der Woche vom 5.1.26 wird die 2. Auflage gedruckt und ab 12.1.26 verschickt. Wer bislang kein Heft abbekommen hat, kann es nun wieder im Shop bestellen.
Viel Spaß mit dem Video (in manchen Browsern kommt unten eine Fehlermeldung – in dem Fall bitte einfach „auf YouTube ansehen“ anklicken):
Zunächst wünsche ich Euch einen schönen 2. Advent 🙂 .
Es gab nun schon länger keine Brot-Videos mehr von mir. Das hat zeitliche Gründe, denn ähnlich den Fotodokumentationen und dem Verfassen von Blog Artikeln steckt hinter einem gut geschnittenen und editierten Video eine Menge Arbeit.
Vor zwei Wochen war ich in Leverkusen und konnte als neuer Experte beim Youtube-Kanal „Brot – Kongress“ auftreten. Entstanden sind drei Videos, zwei davon mit meinen aktuellsten Rezepten. Gemeinsam mit Michaela Emundts backe ich die türkischen Sesamringe „Simit“ und das „Dinkel-Sylter.
Simit
Dinkel-Sylter
Video Nr. 3 über das Vierkornbrot aus dem Buch „Heimatbrote“ ist noch nicht erschienen. Ich ergänze es dann später.
Ich hoffe Euch gefallen die Videos und tragen dazu bei, die Rezeptbeschreibungen noch etwas besser zu verstehen.
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