Gut health is everywhere right now. The hashtag #GutTok has over 6 billion views on TikTok, the global digestive health product market is worth over $60 billion, and viral trends that promise to “hack your gut” through miracle products, cleanses, and restrictive diets are all the rage. But what does gut health really mean, and what can science tell us about how to make sure our gut is in good shape?

The gut microbiome, a complex network of trillions of microorganisms living inside our digestive system, may hold the key to the mysteries of gut health. We have a symbiotic relationship with all of those little guys; we keep them well-fed and they produce substances that can benefit our body and brain. These microbes help regulate bodily functions, protect against disease, and recover from illnesses like cyclosporiasis, which is spreading right now across the US.

But with so many voices chiming in on gut health, pushing everything from probiotic foods and supplements to wellness shots and coffee enemas, it can be hard to tell what information is based on real research and what might just be a marketing gimmick or social media clickbait. Vox spoke to doctors and visited Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles to bust some gut health myths for science-backed advice. 

Read more about gut health and gut microbiome research:

• Vox editor Katherine Courage’s book, Cultured: How Ancient Foods Can Feed Our Microbiome.
• Cedars-Sinai’s Human Microbiome Research Institute.
• The MAST program at Cedars-Sinai.
• Trisha Pasricha’s book, You’ve Been Pooping All Wrong. 
• Vox’s explainer video on probiotics in yogurt.
• Pew Research Center’s findings on why people look to influencers for health and wellness information.
• The Myths and Scientific Realities About Gut Microbiota.

This video is presented by Colgate. Colgate doesn’t have a say in our editorial decisions, but they make videos like this one possible.

F1 races are exhilarating. While racing alongside 21 other cars, an F1 driver can reach speeds of up to 231 mph, making it one of the world’s most dangerous sports.

And F1 drivers need to be physically prepared to prevent disaster. Over the course of a single race, they experience hundreds of pounds of force, temperatures up to 130°F, and risk extreme dehydration that can lead to lowered brain function. In order to stay on the road and not pass out, F1 drivers have to be in peak physical condition. 

In order to find out how F1 drivers can survive a sport that is so physically demanding, I hit the gym. Since F1 is such an international sport, there aren’t many specialized trainers in the US. So with the help of an F1 performance expert currently based in the United Arab Emirates, I worked out with David Dunlop, a strength and conditioning coach who works with NFL players. And it turns out that training for F1 is surprisingly similar to training to be a linebacker. 

Read more about the fitness required to drive in an F1 race: 

• Mercedes has an excellent breakdown of G-force on a turn.

• This article from The Drive breaks down the physics of an F1 race.

• Motorsport Industry Association on how F1 simulators help drivers train for the mental side of races.

• New York Times article about the history of F1 in the US (and why people in the states are talking about it now).

This video is presented by the Ford Motor Company. Ford doesn’t have a say in our editorial decisions, but they make videos like this one possible.

Two years after her whirlwind ascension to Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice President Kamala Harris is thinking about…running for president again. Not doing it — yet — but laying the groundwork in case she does.

She’s done the book tour through the early states. She’s taken the meeting with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and dialed up pro-Palestinian organizers to feel out the room. And she’s leading many 2028 polls — ahead of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, ahead of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, ahead of the field. But she remains noncommittal to the prospect about running in 2028 and is yet to weigh in on the Democratic party’s most pressing ideological fights.

It’s an odd situation: The candidate is unclear if she wants to run — and the party seems unclear if they want her to.

So last week, I talked with Democratic Party officials, donors, and South Carolina voters for our last episode of America, Actually to figure out whether Harris has a lane for another presidential bid — and whether it’s one she actually wants.

Here’s what I learned:

The Harris camp treats 2024 as an anomaly

The case from her inner circle is that the 2024 presidential election against President Donald Trump simply doesn’t count. To start, President Joe Biden dropped out in July — under pressure from virtually the entire Democratic Party — and left her just 107 days to mount a campaign.

And, then, there were the multiple assassination attempts against Trump, including one that resulted in an indelible image of the bloodied candidate pumping his fist in a knot of Secret Service agents. As one Harris surrogate put it to me: “I think Jesus Christ would’ve lost in 2024 after the assassination attempt.”

It’s a real argument, but it’s also exactly the argument a team makes once it has decided the loss wasn’t about the candidate. I’m not sure the rest of the party agree. (Also, she did run for the nomination in 2020 and dropped out in late 2019, before the first primary contest.)

The donor class may be ready to turn the page

I called John Morgan, a Florida mega-donor who’s raised tens of millions for Democrats going back to the Clinton years. He doesn’t want Harris to run, but, even more, he said that he thinks the money won’t materialize and that she and Newsom would be cannibalizing the same California checkbooks. He also raised her ties to the Biden administration. According to Morgan, the entire Biden era needs what he called — and I’m quoting the man — a “Bye Bye Biden” sendoff.

Morgan also added plenty of donors feel this way, and almost none will say it out loud, because “people think to say no to her, they could be labeled racist, and they don’t want that, ’cause they’re Democrats,” he said. 

Oof.

Nobody has actually replaced her — and that’s the real story

Here’s one where the Harris team has a point. No one has yet supplanted her with the two groups that anchor the Democratic base: Black voters and women. To this moment, that bond holds. I felt it at a Juneteenth picnic in North Charleston, where “Yes, she should run” won our little yes-bucket, no-bucket poll. A few other responses we got: “Third time’s a charm.” “We need women.” “It was stolen from her the first time.”

But the fuller conversations were more nuanced than any topline number. There’s a generational split — younger voters are raising her prosecutor record and her posture on Gaza, with one telling me she “was locking us up until she needed our vote.” There’s a gender split — men at the picnic were ready to run back “a competent white man” before another woman, and women insisted that the door just needs one more good push.

Beneath nearly all of it, one word kept surfacing, from the yeses and the nos alike: fresh. People want a fresh face. Some want a fresher Harris. Some just want somebody new.

The Black vote — particularly in the South — has been the great consolidating force in modern Democratic primaries: the firewall that lined up behind Hillary Clinton in 2016, that rescued Joe Biden in South Carolina in 2020, that ultimately made Obama.

Democrats run orderly primaries when that group decides early and moves together. A Black electorate that’s split by age, split by gender, and openly shopping for a new face isn’t just a headache for Harris; it’s a break from decades of how this party has chosen a nominee. That’s not really a story about Kamala Harris. It’s a story about a party that doesn’t know what it wants — and a 2028 presidential cycle that’s going to be a good deal messier than the polling makes it look.

As always, 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.

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.

Euer Doc!

Hier ist das Video, das Jörg Langer mit Amiga-VIP RJ Mical auf der Amiga40 in Mönchengladbach auf Englisch geführt hat. Der US-Amerikaner war an der Entwicklung des Amiga 1000 beteiligt sowie hat eigenhändig Intuition programmiert, die Grundlage für die grafische Benutzeroberfläche des Amiga, Workbench. Viel Spaß dabei!

 

Liebe MacOS-Safari-Nutzer: Bitte auf „Video auf YouTube ansehen“ klicken, wir können gegen diese neue Browser-Sicherheitseinstellung nichts machen.

Jörg Langer hat die quietschgelbe Atari 2600+ Pac-Man Edition angetestet, inklusive der beiden beiliegenden Pac-Man-Versionen, von denen eine uralt – die Atari-2600-Version – und eine brandneu ist und extra programmiert wurde. Und da sich beide auf dem gleichen Modul befinden, ihr wechselt per DIP-Schalter zwischen ihnen, lautet der treffende Titel dafür Pac-Man Double Feature.

Außerdem spielt Jörg kurz das ebenfalls noch recht frische Tiger Heli an (vor wenigen Monaten für Atari 7800 erschienen) und verrät euch natürlich sein Fazit zur knapp 150 Euro kostenden Pac-Man-Edition. Das Video ergänzt den Artikel im aktuellen Retro Gamer 1/26.