In the first part of this talk, I will discuss sterile neutrino production in modified cosmologies. Although the standard assumption is a radiation dominated universe up to the era of reheating, there are motivated models in which the Hubble rate-temperature relation changes. The abundance of sterile neutrinos produced both resonantly and non-resonantly can be drastically altered with interesting implications for experimental searches. In the second part of my talk, I will present a set of bounds on the primordial black hole (PBH) mass density. By considering stable gas clouds in thermal equilibrium, we can calculate the cooling rate and impose constraints on possible heating processes. Intermediate mass black holes, which can form efficient accretion disks, and light black holes, which emit Hawking radiation, would generate significant amounts of thermal energy. We set limits on the dark matter fraction of PBH as a result and briefly explore the possible contributions from jets. In the final section of the talk, I will discuss two PBH formation models from first order phase transitions. During a first order phase transition, compact remnants in the form of thermal balls and Fermi balls can be formed from particles trapped within the false vacuum. Eventually, after significant cooling, these remnants can collapse into primordial black holes. We consider a delayed formation scenario in which PBH formation occurs after the CMB era. This evades a strong constraint on intermediate mass black holes derived from Planck observations, and opens parameter space for two astrophysically significant populations: BBH progenitors and SMBH seeds. Another PBH formation scenario relies on the decreased pressure forces during a high temperature QCD transition. This produces a peak in the PBH mass distribution at sub-solar mass and even asteroid mass scales, within the PBH mass window.