Switched on Pop’s Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding love fresh vegetables and guitar pedals
As if you needed more reason to love Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" beyond its pop perfection, it is also, according to lore, the genesis for Switched on Pop, one of the best music podcasts out there. Cohosts Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding obsessively dissect pop songs, from the theory behind their musical choices to their production techniques. If you're a student of pop music, then this is a must-listen podcast.
Sloan is a composer and professor of musicology at USC Thornton School of Music, where he researches pop, but also jazz and even Tin Pan Alley. Harding is a songwriter, music journalist, and a professor as well. Their combined …
Star Wars: Ahsoka season 2 and Starfighter get teased at D23
Season two of Star Wars: Ahsoka is still months away, but Lucasfilm still took the opportunity to tease it a bit at D23. The company dropped the first trailer for the new season ahead of its January 20th, 2027 debut. The clip shows a darker, witchcraft-filled take on the Star Wars universe, with Grand Admiral Thrawn (blue skin, red eyes, and an unsettlingly calm demeanor) threatening to thrust the galaxy back into large-scale war after the fall of the Empire.
Ryan Gosling also took the stage at D23 to tease the upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter movie. Unfortunately, while some footage was shown, it was exclusive to those in the room, and Luca …
Disney D23 2026: Everything announced for Star Wars, Marvel, and more
The annual Disney fan event showed off the cast of Marvel’s X-Men movie, plus a new trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, and our first look at the VisionQuest TV show for Disney Plus. For Star Wars fans, there was a teaser trailer for season two of Ahsoka, plus a special look at Star Wars: Starfighter with an appearance from Ryan Gosling.
Other new announcements included a few updates about Pixar, The Simpsons, Bluey, and others you can find below.
- Disney is making a Kingdom Hearts anime.
- The Bluey Movie teaser shows Keepy Uppy in Disneyfied CG.
- Star Wars: Ahsoka season 2 and Starfighter get teased at D23
- A new Avengers: Doomsday trailer focuses on Robert Downey Jr.’s Doom.
- The first trailer for VisionQuest reunites Paul Bettany and James Spader.
- Marvel reveals the new X-Men cast, including Inde Navarrette and Adam Driver
- Kingdom Hearts will be featured at Disney’s big D23 expo in August.
- Square Enix teases Kingdom Hearts 4 at Nintendo Direct
I finally found a magnetic phone grip I never want to remove
I told myself I wouldn't buy an OhSnap accessory for my phone. Every one I'd tested was nice, but felt overpriced and slightly flawed. After I weighed in on the $40 Snap Grip 5 last year, I wound up sticking with my $25 Syncwire instead. But OhSnap's $50 Snap Grip Stand finally got me. To have a truly useful vertical stand and grip always attached to my phone, ready at a moment's notice? Heck yes.
Marvel reveals the new X-Men cast, including Inde Navarrette and Adam Driver
With Spider-Man: Brand New Day behind us, and its reveal of Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, Marvel is finally ready to officially welcome the X-Men into the MCU. At the D23 event in Anaheim yesterday, the company revealed the cast for its upcoming, untitled X-Men film, which is scheduled to hit theaters on May 5th of 2028. Though, seeing as that's quite far into the future, we wouldn't be surprised if that date shifted slightly before then.
In addition to Sink, the film will star Kit Connor as Scott Summers (Cyclops), Christopher Abbott as Charles Xavier (Professor X), Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, Maya Boyd as Storm, and Inde Navarrette as Rogue. …
Xteink’s tiny e-readers are getting access to free books through Libby
One of the big tradeoffs with Xteink's pocket-friendly e-readers is a lack of easy access to ebooks. On a Kindle or Kobo you can download tens of thousands of titles through each device's respective online bookstores, but with Xteink's devices you have to source DRM-free ebooks on your own. That's about to change, as the developers of CrossPoint Reader, a free alternative firmware for the X3, X4, and X4 Pro, are introducing support for third-party plug-ins that will expand the e-readers' capabilities. One of the first from the community will give the devices access to DRM-protected ebooks borrowed through OverDrive's Libby library app, or pu …
We’re reaching peak camera with the Sony A7R VI
It wasn't long ago that shooting with a super high-resolution camera meant making serious sacrifices for the sake of all those megapixels. Enter the A7R VI.
Sony's latest flagship high-res camera is a 66.8-megapixel spec monster. In addition to its modest bump in resolution from the last-gen A7R V, it uses a new sensor and processor that unlock nearly any kind of shooting - from sports and action to usable 8K video. It's a huge departure from years ago, when high-resolution cameras were slower, noisier, and more specialized as a result of all those megapixels.
The A7R VI's fully stacked sensor and new Bionz XR2 processor allow it to shoot …
The surprise must-see movie of the summer
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 140, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, don't forget to hydrate, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I've been reading about Will Ferrell and Fabrizio Romano and Heather Cox Richardson, scrolling and scrolling through Ordinary Abundance, watching Avatar Aang (which is as good as you said it was), finally getting proficient in CapCut, obsessing over the latest scandal unearthed by PTFO, rewatching Tires now that the third season is out, trying Spark's AI tools for solving my inbox (so far… meh), revisiting …
When housing is unaffordable, this artist’s device makes pedaling harder
Justin Blinder had just been laid off when he first came up with the idea for Ground Truth. It was 2020, two weeks before covid lockdown went into effect, and the Brooklyn-based artist and technologist had no idea what the future would hold. He started working for the food delivery apps, and as he was riding his bike across the city, he began noticing the stark differences between neighborhoods.
"I really started to kind of become a bit more aware of how different neighborhoods, often right next to each other, could feel very economically and psychologically very far apart, even though it's just really within close proximity," he said. "And …
Samsung has new Galaxy headphones in the works
Strings of code in Samsung's Galaxy Wearable app hint at an upcoming pair of over-ear headphones that could compete with the AirPods Max, SamMobile reports. Samsung's reportedly referring to the headphones as the "Galaxy H1," and SamMobile says they could launch sometime in 2027. That would make these the company's first pair of over-ear headphones since the Level On in 2015, which was released well before Samsung acquired Harman and a number of other audio brands.
Connection status icons in the app standard show the design of over-ear, wireless Bluetooth headphones, but not necessarily exactly what these will look like in the end. Samsung …