Switched on Pop’s Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding love fresh vegetables and guitar pedals
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 […]

The X-Files creator Chris Carter wanted to make a more horrific movie
The X-Files creator Chris Carter wanted to make a more horrific movie

The version of The X-Files: I Want to Believe that premiered in 2008 was not exactly the movie co-writer / director Chris Carter intended to make. Carter wanted to bring agents Mulder and Scully back to the big screen with a grisly story about faith and the supernatural. But executives at 20th Century Fox felt […]

Musician and entrepreneur Tom Vek is building a digital music player, but don’t call it retro
Musician and entrepreneur Tom Vek is building a digital music player, but don’t call it retro

Tom Vek burst onto the scene in 2005 with his album We Have Sound, which garnered a solid 7.6 from the tastemakers of the day over at Pitchfork. His undeniably catchy brand of dancy indietronica landed him an appearance on The OC and placement on the Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack. His follow-up, Leisure Seizure, […]

The best classic slasher movie you’ll never watch
The best classic slasher movie you’ll never watch

Starting with the original in Camp Miasma in 1980, the horror franchise went on to have a long life. There were multiple sequels, spinoffs in the form of arcade cabinets and board games, and just about every kind of merchandise you can think of, from alarm clocks and lunch boxes to Halloween costumes and action […]

Angela Nissel faces down grief with a laugh
Angela Nissel faces down grief with a laugh

Angela Nissel’s latest book, Good Grief, Pass the Bread, Mom Is Dead, is my kind of memoir. Sure, it’s a deeply emotional tale about caring for a terminally ill parent. But it’s delivered with the sort of gallows humor that I often turn to to get me through tough times. Of course, that sort of […]

Logitech’s handheld plans are on ice — don’t expect a G Cloud 2 soon
Logitech’s handheld plans are on ice — don’t expect a G Cloud 2 soon

Logitech’s new gaming boss, Robin Piispanen, tells me he likes the idea of gaming handhelds. “It’s such a charming value proposition,” he says, as we sip iced vanilla lattes at my local cafe. But he’s not building one right now. He’s not sure when or if Logitech should try again, after its underwhelming experiment with […]

Forget what you read on Facebook: 94% of EV drivers won’t go back to gas
Forget what you read on Facebook: 94% of EV drivers won’t go back to gas

On today’s episode of Quick Charge, the audio is sketchy but the math is absolutely rock solid with 94% of current EV owners saying they’ll NEVER go back to driving an antiquated gas guzzler. CDK’s David Thomas walks us through the findings.

Synth historian Oli Freke will spend big on a good bicycle
Synth historian Oli Freke will spend big on a good bicycle

Oli Freke is a musician and journalist whose works have appeared in Sound on Sound, The Quietus, and Mixmag. This has included using math to explore the melodic potential of the Western 12-tone scale and deep dives on effects plug-ins. He’s even written a book tracing the evolution of the synthesizer from 1963 through 1995, […]

The Guardian’s Carter Sherman fondly remembers being terrified by Ocarina of Time
The Guardian’s Carter Sherman fondly remembers being terrified by Ocarina of Time

Carter Sherman has been covering sex, gender, and the complex personal and national politics that accompany them for years. She was a senior reporter for Vice and has written for Elle, Ms. magazine, and Los Angeles magazine as well. Along the way, she’s garnered a Scripps Howard Award, a National Press Club Journalism Award, and […]

FL Studio head Constantin Koehncke turns to Reddit for feedback and fun
FL Studio head Constantin Koehncke turns to Reddit for feedback and fun

If you’re a music maker of a certain age, then you probably once dabbled with a pirated copy of a little app called Fruity Loops. These days it’s called FL Studio, and Constantin Koehncke, is the man responsible for shepherding the pioneering digital audio workstation (DAW) through the modern age. As CEO of Image Line, […]