FX is filling out the cast of “Shōgun,” with Risei Kukihara, Ryô Satô, Seishiro Nishida, Mantaro Koichi and Takashi Yamaguchi joining Season 2 of the historical drama series
Kukihara as will play Gabriel; Satô (“Silence”) will play Rin; Nishida (“Tobu ga Gotoku”) will play Jōshin; Koichi (“Emergency Room 24 Hours”) will play Saitō; and Yamaguchi (“Letters from Iwo Jima,” “Pachinko,” “Accused”) will play Kanō. They join previously announced cast members Hiroyuki Sanada, Cosmo Jarvis, Fumi Nikaidô, Ren Meguro, Asami Mizukawa, Shinnosuke Abe, Hiroto Kanai, Masataka Kubota, Sho Kaneta, Yûko Miyamoto, Yuka Kouri, Tommy Bastow, Jun Kunimura, Yoriko Dôguchi, Eita Okuno and Takaaki Enoki.
Kukihara, whose casting in “Shōgun” marks his first role in a major production, is repped by 42 and CAA. Casting for Season 2 has been led by Kei Kawamura and Laura Schiff, who won an Emmy for drama casting after Season 1.
FX has not yet divulged specific details about the new characters, or about the plot of Season 2 besides that it is “set over a decade after the events of the first season and continues the historically-inspired saga of these two men from different worlds [Yoshii Toranaga and John Blackthorne, played by Hiroyuki Sanada and Cosmo Jarvis] whose fates are inextricably entwined.”
“Shōgun” is adapted from the 1975 novel of the same name by James Clavell. Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks created the series and serve as showrunners. Executive producers include Kondo and Marks alongside Michaela Clavell, Edward L. McDonnell, Michael De Luca and Sanada. FX Productions is the studio.
Plimsoll Productions, part of ITV Studios, has hired executive producer Paul Wright, who will develop live programming across all genres, including adventure, factual entertainment, and natural history.
Wright most recently worked on “Skyscraper Live with Alex Honnold,” Plimsoll’s live Netflix event in which free solo climber Alex Honnold scaled one of the world’s tallest skyscrapers in Taipei, Taiwan before a global audience.
A Royal Television Society and Rose d’Or-winner, Wright has over 25 years of experience as an executive producer and showrunner. Some of his credits include “Bigheads,” “The Million Pound Cube,” “Sounds Like Friday Night,” “Pride of Britain,” “Comic Relief’s Big Chat with Graham Norton,” “US Sing On! with Titus Burgess,” “US Lingo with RuPaul” and the “Laureus World Sport Awards.” He also produced “Comedy Map of Britain” and multiple FIFA World Cups, the Athens Olympics and “Match of the Day” for BBC.
“Live television is where I live and breathe, and ‘Skyscraper Live’ showed me that Plimsoll is the perfect home for that ambition,” Wright said in a statement. “The talent here is extraordinary, and the canvas is as wide as it gets.”
“’Skyscraper Live’ was the most demanding live production we’ve ever made, and Paul rose to every challenge it presented,” said James Smith, head of adventure and live at Plimsoll. “As we continue to invest creatively across our live slate, Paul’s range across genres, editorial judgment, and ability to perform under real-time pressure make him exactly the right person for this moment.”
Plimsoll recently earned six Emmy Awards for “A Real Bug’s Life” (available on Disney+/National Geographic) and is currently in production on “Surviving Pompeii with Tom Hiddleston” (also for Disney+/National Geographic), in addition to several unannounced live projects in development and production.
The Cavaliers’ James Harden averaged 27.7 points, 8.3 assists, 6.0 rebounds and 1.7 steals over three games last week.
We’ve wrapped up another late-season week, and the upper echelon of the fantasy rankings is once again populated by a pair of stars in Luka Dončić and Nikola Jokić. The remainder of the top five is star-studded as well, as stars on contending teams continue to elevate their game at a critical time of the season.
The following players averaged the most fantasy points per game last week (one-game minimum):
The Lakers put together a perfect 4-0 week, and Dončić was unsurprisingly a critical reason why. The centerpiece of the star Slovenian’s week was a memorable 60-point showing over 38 minutes against the Heat in Miami on Thursday, a game in which Luka went a blistering 18-for-30 from the floor and 15-for-19 from the line. Dončić’s one double-double of the week was a 40-point, 10-assist tally against the Rockets, and he took no less than 25 shots in any of his four contests, including at least 12 from 3-point range in each game.
Jokić was a runner-up to Dončić’ again this week, generating impressive numbers over the last three games of the Nuggets’ four-game week following a St. Patrick’s Day offensive dud where he scored only eight points against the Sixers. The versatile big man did hand out 14 assists in that game, however, and he went on to average 24.3 points, 12.0 rebounds, 10.7 assists, 1.7 blocks and 1.3 steals across 37 minutes per contest in the subsequent trio of games. Jokić shot 58.8% over the entirety of the four-game span, helping make up for some struggles from the free-throw line (61.5% on 4.3 free-throw attempts per contest).
Harden was integral to a successful road trip for the Cavaliers this past week. The Beard helped make up for a one-game absence on the part of Donovan Mitchell due to an eye injury and pumped out some impressive numbers in all three games. Harden shot 50% from both in front of and behind the arc, and he averaged 27.7 points, 8.3 assists, 6.0 rebounds and 1.7 steals per contest over 35.3 minutes per game. He also made good on 83.3% of his 8.0 free-throw attempts per contest as he looks increasingly comfortable ahead of a highly anticipated postseason for Cleveland.
Adebayo’s unforgettable 83-point performance was two scoring periods ago, but the star big man kept up the stellar production during his two times on the floor in Week 21. Bam missed Miami’s first game of the week Tuesday against the Hornets before returning with a 28-point, 10-rebound double-double against the Lakers in a 134-126 loss Thursday night. He was even better in another crushing interconference defeat Saturday, managing a massive 32-point, 21-rebound double-double that also included four assists and two steals across 45 minutes against the Rockets while navigating four fouls.
It’s quite the prolific fantasy week when SGA MVP-level exploits are overshadowed, but the star guard still found his way into the top five with a pair of 40-point nights among his three games. Gilgeous-Alexander contributed the outstanding offensive efforts in wins against the Magic and Wizards, performances he sandwiched around a more subdued but nearly perfect shooting night (8-for-9) in an easy win over the Nets. To say Gilgeous-Alexander was locked in from the field throughout the three games would be an understatement – he drained 61.9% of his shots, including 57.1% from deep while averaging 21.0 attempts per contest.
This week’s preview:
The following players are top fantasy point producers and play at least two games next week with fewer than two matchups against top-10 defenses:
“‘American Idol’ Official Podcast” will be hosted by Danielle Fishel and will “dive deeper into America’s most iconic music competition series, exploring the performances everyone’s talking about, and offering exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes insights, and expert analysis of the judges’ critiques.”
The podcast will premiere on Wednesday, April 1, on Disney+, Hulu, and other podcast platforms, following the live shows, which kick off Monday, March 30.
Fishel, best known for her iconic role as Topanga on ABC’s “Boy Meets World” and later, Disney Channel’s “Girl Meets World,” has been part of the Disney family for decades. Since 2017, she’s been woking behind the camera, directing more than 50 episodes of multi-camera shows, including “Wizards Beyond Waverly Place,” “Raven’s Home,” “Shifting Gears” and “Lopez vs Lopez.”
She is the co-host of the “Teen Beat” podcast and “Pod Meets World.” In 2025, she signed a new overall deal with iHeartMedia. She and her husband, Jensen Karp, are also producers on “Teen Beat, “How Rude, Tanneritos!,” Magical Rewind” and “Pod Meets World.”
“American Idol” returned for Season 24 (its ninth on ABC) in January with its most-watched premiere in four years with an average of 8.27 million viewers in live+3 and multiplatform viewing.
“American Idol” airs live Mondays on ABC and streams the next day on Hulu. Beginning March 30, they will also stream live on Disney+. “Idol” is produced by Fremantle and 19 Entertainment, a part of Sony Pictures Television. Executive producers are showrunner Megan Wolflick, Eli Holzman and Aaron Saidman.
Ronnie Bowman, a preeminent bluegrass singer who was also renowned for co-writing songs recorded by top country stars like Chris Stapleton, Kenny Chesney and George Strait, died Sunday at age 64.
Bowman was involved in a motorcycle accident in Ashland, Tenn. on Saturday and died from his injuries the following afternoon at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville.
“His was the voice that defined ’90s bluegrass,” wrote the website Bluegrass Today in reporting his passing.
“Ronnie Bowman was an amazing singer and songwriter,” wrote Billy Strings, in one of many posts that his fellow performers put up on social media. “One of the best entertainers in bluegrass and country music. He lit up any room he was in. I’m terribly sad to hear that he has passed on after a tragic motorcycle accident. May our dear friend rest in peace.” Strings had had Bowman join him on stage at the Ryman last year.
As a celebrated tunesmith, Bowman won the ACM Award for song of the year for co-writing Chris Stapleton’s “Nobody to Blame,” one of three contributions he made to that country superstar’s breakout album in 2015. (Stapleton and Bowman are pictured above at the 2016 ACMs.) He also shared songwriting credit for two No. 1 country hits, Kenny Chesney’s “Never Wanted Nothing More” (also a co-write with Stapleton) and Brooks & Dunn’s chart-topping “It’s Getting Better All the Time.”
Other artists who cut Bowman’s songs included Jessie Buckley (for the film “WIld Rose”), Nick Cave, Cody Johnson, Lee Ann Womack, Ralph Stanley, Bill Gaither, Del McCoury and Marcus King. And as a singer or player, he appeared on recordings by Loretta Lynn, Sierra Hull, Alan Jackson, John Fogerty, Jake Owen, Yola, Randy Newman and many others.
But he was best known to bluegrass fans as a singer-songwriter in his own right, first as lead singer and bass player for 11 years with the Lonesome River Band, where he began a partnership with Dan Tyminski in 1990, and by the mid-’90s as a solo artist. He was the recipient of numerous awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association, starting with an album of the year win for “Cold Virginia Night” in 1995, and the IBMA named him male vocalist of the year three times.
Dierks Bentley, the country star who is known for his bluegrass bona fides, paid tribute to Bowman in an emotional Instagram post.
“Going to take awhile for it to sink in that Ronnie Bowman is gone,” wrote Bentley. “He was the favorite bluegrass and country singer of everyone I know. And he was everyone’s favorite hang.”
Bentley noted that he had many memories of hanging with Bowman at the Station Inn in Nashville, but said his favorite was of a favor he called in at the inaugural DelFest (named after bluegrass legend Del McCoury).
“My wife loved Ronnie’s song ‘It’s Getting Better All the Time’ (which Brooks and Dunn cut). Obsessed really. And while she was sleeping in a bunk on the bus, I went and found Ronnie and asked him if he would come serenade her! He came up on the bus with his guitar, snuck back into the middle bunk section which is very dark, hit the first chord and ‘I don’t stop breathing every time the phone rings…’ Imagine sleeping and all of a sudden you hear someone whose voice you love, but hadn’t met, singing your current all-time fave song, six inches away from your head on the other side of a bus bunk curtain, in the pitch dark. Shock and confusion followed by tears and laughs. It was the sweetest thing to do, and that’s just how he was.
“Listening to that song takes on a whole new meaning now,” Bentley concluded. “Can’t imagine what Garnet, his family and all his close friends are feeling right now. Thoughts and prayers for them, and for all the RoBo fans out there, as he’s affectionally referred to in my band. We all loved him.”
A statement posted by Garnet Bowman, Ronnie’s wife, read: “We are in complete shock and utterly devastated to confirm that our beloved Ronnie passed away yesterday… Ronnie was beloved by so many in our music community, whom he loved so dearly… and we are beyond grateful for all of the love & outpouring toward us already. Right now, as we process, we just covet your prayers. We have no words at this time, but thank you and graciously request that you honor our privacy while we try to put our heads around this and grieve. What we know and hold onto, is that he is with his Savior Jesus in Heaven, although already terribly missed here on Earth. Any further details or plans will be made public when there is any information to share about honoring the legacy of our beloved Ronnie.”
“Love that man,” posted country singer-songwriter Ernest in response.
His onetime bandmate Tyminski wrote that Bowman was “so much more than an old friend and band mate. We formed a bond years ago that we carried with us through life knowing that we had something special together. For a long time no one thought of my name without his being attached. We were a pair. I am not the man I am today without him in my life. The whole world will feel this devastating loss and he will forever be my brother.”
One of Bowman’s last posts on social media was to repost an excerpt that George Strait’s account had put up of the song “The Journey of Your Life,” with the caption, “Thanks for recording this one George!” It’s a composition that is likely to come up as Bowman is remembered, with lyrics inspired by a grandfather figure that include the lines, “Ride the wind ’til we meet again / On the other side of life… / I’ll be the angel flyin’ by your side / On the journey of your life.”
EA has put another game on the chopping block, or at least the console versions of it. The company says it will delist the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Battlefield Hardline from digital storefronts on May 22, and shut down the online services on June 22. The single-player campaign will remain playable for those who own the game. The PC version of Battlefield Hardline isn’t affected by these changes.
In its announcement on X, EA didn’t explain exactly why it’s ceasing support for the game on PS4 and Xbox One. It pointed readers to a FAQ on its website that lays out some of the typical reasons why it ends online support for its games. These include factors like declining player bases.
Battlefield Hardline, which was released in 2015, will still be available on Steam as well as EA’s own PC app. The Steam version has a peak concurrent player count of 41 so far this year.
It’s hardly uncommon for a publisher to end online services for games with declining player bases, but it’s an issue that’s come into greater focus over the last few years thanks in part to the Stop Killing Games movement. EA alone has sunsetted dozens of games. Its website has a full accounting of these, spread acrossthreewebpages.
Anthropic announced today that its Claude Code and Claude Cowork tools are being updated to accomplish tasks using your computer. The latest update will see these AI resources become capable of opening files, using the browser and running dev tools.
When enabled, the Claude AI chatbot will first prioritize connectors to supported services such as the Google workplace suite or Slack, but if a connector isn’t available, it will be able to still execute an assigned task. Claude should ask for permission before taking these actions, but Anthropic still recommended not using this feature to handle sensitive information as a precaution.
Claude computer use will initially be available to Claude Pro and Claude Max subscribers on macOS. This feature is still in a research preview, so will continue to be adjusted based on Anthropic’s user feedback. It will also support use with Anthropic’s Dispatch feature, which allows a person to message the chatbot in a single continuous conversation across phone and desktop.
Claude Cowork was introduced in January. It’s an iteration of the Claude Code AI agent for programmers that is designed for more casual users.
Anthony Scaramucci, a well-known figure in the cryptocurrency world, made striking statements about the future of Bitcoin and digital assets during a program he participated in.
Scaramucci notes that the current pullback looks frightening but is consistent with historical cycles, and he believes the market is near its bottom.
Scaramucci described the sell-off that followed Bitcoin’s break above $100,000 as a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” He noted that many early whales believed in the four-year cycle and began profit-taking upon seeing the six-figure numbers, adding that these sales were offset by institutional buying. He further stated that the decline could have been much deeper if it weren’t for giants like BlackRock and Fidelity stepping onto the scene.
Despite short-term fluctuations, Scaramucci maintains his long-term optimism, predicting that Bitcoin could reach a value of between $2 million and $3 million within the next decade (around 2032).
Scaramucci argued that when the “fear and greed” index in the market falls to extremely low levels, such as 5, it usually signals periods of great profit.
Scaramucci, making a bold prediction about the future of projects in the sector, claimed that out of approximately 25,000 coins in the market, 24,900 will eventually disappear. However, he foresees that those that survive this “cleanup” (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana) will grow massively through tokenization of real-world assets and institutional adoption.
Referring to regulations in the US, Scaramucci said he expects the “Clarity Act” to be passed soon.
The Solana Foundation is making a new pitch to large institutions: privacy as a customizable feature, not a trade-off.
In a report released on Monday by the foundation, “Privacy on Solana: A Full-Spectrum Approach for the Modern Enterprise,” the organization argued that the next phase of crypto adoption will depend less on transparency alone and more on giving companies control over what they reveal — and to whom.
The framing marks a shift from crypto’s early ethos. Public blockchains have traditionally emphasized openness, where transactions are visible and traceable, even if users are represented only by wallet addresses. The report acknowledged that this “pseudonymity” model, while foundational, falls short for many real-world use cases. Financial institutions, for example, may need to prove transactions occurred without exposing counterparties, while companies processing payroll must avoid broadcasting employee salaries.
Underlying the pitch is a technical claim: that Solana’s speed makes advanced privacy techniques practical. The team argued that the network’s high throughput and low latency allow these methods to run at near-web speeds, opening the door to use cases such as encrypted order books or private credit risk calculations.
But rather than offering a single solution for privacy, the foundation presented privacy as a spectrum composed of four distinct modes: pseudonymity, confidentiality, anonymity and fully private systems.
At the base level, pseudonymity keeps identities obscured behind wallet addresses while leaving transaction data visible. Moving along the spectrum, confidentiality allows participants to be known while encrypting sensitive information like balances and transfer amounts.
Anonymity flips that dynamic, hiding the identities of participants while allowing transaction data to remain visible. At the far end are fully private systems, where both identities and transaction data are shielded through techniques like zero-knowledge proofs and multiparty computation.
The message is that no single privacy model fits all. “For enterprises, privacy is a spectrum, not a switch,” the report said.
What Solana is trying to do is bring all of these privacy options into one system. Instead of choosing just one approach, companies can mix and match tools — like hiding transaction amounts, proving something is valid without revealing details, or controlling who can access certain data — depending on what they need.
In practice, that could mean executing trades without revealing order size, sharing risk data across banks without exposing individual balance sheets, or allowing users to prove compliance without disclosing personal information.
The report leans heavily on the idea that privacy and regulation can coexist. The team pointed to mechanisms like “auditor keys,” which enable designated parties to decrypt transactions when required. Other systems would allow wallets to demonstrate compliance status without revealing identity. These features are framed as a response to growing regulatory scrutiny, particularly around anti-money laundering rules and financial surveillance.
“Privacy is a market requirement,” the report said. “Customers expect it and applications require it. On Solana, you choose your privacy level, from encrypted balances to zero-knowledge anonymity to multiparty confidential computing. Each level maps to a compliance path, and each is composable with the broader ecosystem.”
Read more: Solana Foundation’s Liu: Focus on finance, not gaming ‘misadventures’
Spotify has laid off about 3 percent of staff in its podcasting group.
The layoffs Monday impacted 15 positions across The Ringer and Spotify Studios. The changes are being described as improving the unit’s execution and speed, rather than as a cost-cutting matter, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Overall, the goal is to flatten the structure of the unit, and give creative leads more direct control, the source said.
“Spotify does not comment on staffing shifts,” a spokesperson for Spotify said when asked for comment.
As part of the layoffs, the Ringer podcastNew York, New York With John Jastremski will be ending. Andrew Gruttadaro, special projects lead at The Ringer, and staff writer Miles Surrey, both wrote on social media that they had been laid off.
“It’s impossible to sum up nine years in a tweet but: I worked on so many things — profiles, theme weeks, special projects—that I am incredibly proud of,” Gruttardo wrote on X.
Spotify has been growing overall user numbers, reporting 751 million monthly active users in its most recent quarter, an increase of 38 million, marking the highest number of net adds in Spotify’s history, and pushing heavily into a video podcasting strategy, including inking a deal with Netflix.
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