Horse People Podcast

Steve Thomas is a retired oral and maxillofacial surgeon and now the amateur huntsman for the Santa Fe Hunt in Temecula. A Missouri farm kid who rode western and coon hunted with his grandfather, he found fox hunting by accident when a Kansas neighbor turned out to be a master who'd ridden across his property for thirty years. One ride in a pickup and he was hooked. Twenty-five years of staffing later he's chaired the MFHA's Hound Show and Performance Trial Committee, hunted hounds across the US, Canada, England, Ireland and New Zealand, and turns seventy next year still called young for the sport. This is his first season with Santa Fe Hounds.

What we get into:
How he fell into it: a Kansas neighbor, a pickup ride, and an instant hook.
Why hounds come first: breeding to your country, biddability, and a summer teaching the puppies (Milo included) to come back to the horn.
The misconceptions: no guns, not a blood sport, failed coyote control, all about the chase.
Hound shows versus performance trials, and what a guest huntsman does at Belle Meade.
Making Santa Fe Hounds a destination hunt, and keeping an aging sport alive.

Steve has hunted on three continents, but the thing that lights him up is a puppy learning where his invisible line is. He explains why he'd pick hounds over horses every time, and how a sport most people never try is as addicting as golf. There's a story about losing count of the jumps in New Zealand, a mid-hunt reprimand, and a real walkthrough for anyone wondering how you actually start.

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Jim Seilsopour, the most consistent guest of the pod, and resident fox hunter, just got back from three weeks in Israel, so this one starts on the beach at Caesarea and wanders everywhere from there.. We use all of that as a runway into thoroughbreds, off-track aftercare, the new racing league picking a fight with the Triple Crown, and what we want to build with Horse People next year.
Five things we get into:
The new team-based racing league, started by the former Liberty Media exec behind F1's resurgence, and why splitting the sport away from the Triple Crown could hurt everyone.
Jim's Israel riding: Arabians that stayed sound over rock and road, four-hour beach rides in and out of the Mediterranean, Druze horsemen who could flat-out ride, and a 12-year-old phenom who reminded Jim of himself at that age.
Off-track thoroughbreds getting second lives in the hunt field, and why we both think the thoroughbred is still the most capable horse alive even as modern eventing leans warmblood and dressage-heavy.
Keeping horses at home versus boarding them, and the connection Jim says he never appreciated until he was feeding twice a day and catching the small things before they became big ones.
Bloodlines, live and unscripted, as we pull up Subic Boy, a new thoroughbred of the Santa Fe hunt on Equibase and trace him back through Bernardini and Seattle Slew to Secretariat

If you have ever wondered what happens to a racehorse after the track, whether a Silicon Valley playbook can be dropped onto a 150-year-old sport, or just what it feels like to gallop an Arabian along the coast where Herod built his city, this is the conversation. Two horse people talking the way horse people actually talk, following the thread wherever it goes, from a Maryland statehouse to a monastery on Mount Carmel to a cattle ranch where a horse that was running at Santa Anita three months ago is now chasing hounds.
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Jim Seilsopour joins Horse People as official co-host in this episode, marking the show's shift from a guest interview podcast into something bigger: a mission to attempt every discipline in the world. Jim is a lifelong horseman with deep roots in fox hunting as a member of Santa Fe Hounds, plus a background spanning polo, ranch work, and riding across the globe from Iran to Mongolia. He and Gideon have spent the last several months riding together, and this episode makes it official.

The new format. More episodes a month, as many weekly catch-up between Gideon and Jim as possible, and a rotating focus on trying new disciplines with real coaches and guests, starting with cross country schooling.
Cross-discipline riding builds better horsemen. Jim and Gideon trade stories from polo, fox hunting, and ranch work in Oregon and Iran, arguing that riding across disciplines, not mastering just one, is what separates a horseman from a rider.
The Donna Brothers detour. Gideon recaps a call with the longtime NBC Sports Kentucky Derby analyst and former jockey, pulling a line that becomes a theme for the episode: the best stories come from getting people out of their head and into their heart.
Wild stories from the saddle. Counting coup on feral dogs in Iran, getting bucked into a barbed wire fence in New Mexico, getting lifted clean out of the saddle by a champion Kazakh wrestler mid-gallop.
What's coming next. One-day event combining dressage, show jumping, and cross country, a possible trip to Israel to ride with the Druze, and the idea of a Horse People "punch card" for trying every discipline.

By the end, it's clear this isn't a rebrand so much as a reveal of what the show was always building toward. If you've ever wondered what it takes to actually try every discipline in the horse world, or just want two horsemen talking honestly about what makes this life worth it, start here.

Donna Brothers didn't just grow up around horses, she grew up as the daughter of one of the first licensed female jockeys in the United States. From learning to ride before she could remember to becoming one of the winningest female jockeys of the late 80s and 90s, Donna's path was never a straight line.
She spent eleven years in the saddle before trading in her silks for a microphone, joining NBC Sports in 2000 and covering everything from the Kentucky Derby to dressage at the World Equestrian Games.
After 25 years as one of horse racing's most recognizable on-track voices, Donna called her final Preakness Stakes in 2025 and retired on her own terms.
How Donna's mother became one of the first six licensed female jockeys in the US in 1968, and how a workers' comp calculation literally launched a family legacy
The story behind her decision to retire: why she left at the top, and what it felt like to say "riders up" one last time on NBC
The art of the post-race interview, how to keep a winning jockey in their heart instead of their head, and why she never writes out questions
The Mind That Bird Kentucky Derby win, Calvin Burrell's raw emotion, and the Southwest New Mexico thread that connects Sunland Park to the Triple Crown
What she thinks horse racing media gets right, what it gets wrong, and her honest advice on building a content-driven podcast
Donna Brothers has been in the sport long enough to have ridden with Mike Smith as a kid in El Paso, interviewed Jose Ortiz seconds after he beat his own brother in a Kentucky Derby photo finish, and watched an entire generation of young women grow up wanting to do what she did.
This conversation covers what 40 years in horse racing actually looks like from the inside, and why she's finally okay stepping out of the spotlight.
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Randy Sarf is an entrepreneur, lifelong horse racing fan, and co-owner of LSU Stables. He's been going to the track since he was five years old, claimed his first horse at 18 with his bar mitzvah money, and has since built a portfolio that includes Hildebrandt's (a nearly 100-year-old ice cream company), and the Horse Whisperer Network, a media venture aimed at changing how fans experience horse racing.

He's also the host of the Horse Whisperer and Sons Podcast alongside his sons Zack and Jordan.

Key Topics Discussed:
How Randy claimed his first horse at 18, kicked off a lifelong passion with a 50-to-1 stakes win with Quiet Ruler, and eventually went all in on ownership through LSU Stables after a health scare pushed him to rethink his career
His bold argument that horse racing media needs to center jockeys as the athletes and stars of the sport, not horses or pedigrees, comparing jockeys like Irad Ortiz Jr. and Jose Ortiz to NBA players and ranking his top jockeys by "audibles"
The story behind the Horse Whisperer Network and Randy's plan to compete with FanDuel, NYRA, and Fox by producing high-quality race day coverage only on the days people actually watch, with top-tier on-air talent
How Randy sponsored jockey breeches across all three legs of the 2024 Triple Crown, turning a marketing bet into a Citi Field partnership with the New York Mets and a growth engine for Hildebrandt's
What it takes to spot, buy, and develop a stakes-caliber horse like Farbridge, and the economics of horse ownership when you're guaranteed to lose money 80% of the time
Why You Should Listen:Randy Sarf has been in horse racing longer than most people have been alive, and he's not shy about telling you exactly what's broken and how he'd fix it. From sneaking into the winner's circle as a kid to sponsoring his way across the Triple Crown and landing an ice cream deal at Citi Field, this conversation is part masterclass in racing entrepreneurship, part blueprint for what horse racing media could look like if someone with real skin in the game got behind the mic.
Whether you're a seasoned bettor or you've never been to the track, Randy's energy and stories will make you want to go.
Find Randy and the Horse Whisperer Podcast: @thehorsewhispererpodcast on Instagram | @randysarf on Instagram
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