Title: White dwarf kicks, hot Jupiter formation and spotted binaries

Abstract: The golden age of large astrophysics surveys has united the fields of extra-solar planets and stellar variability and evolution. I will present two projects that showcase this synergy. First, I will introduce two novel pathways to form hot Jupiters, based on the seemingly unrelated but actually very important phenomenon of white dwarf recoil kicks. Second, I will present a study of stellar activity (spots and flares) on a sample of tight eclipsing binaries. We have detected at least one activity cycle, and have seen a curious trend of spots to be preferentially at sub- and anti-stellar points.