John Hodgman is a contributor to the Daily Show and the author of two books, the more recent of which is More Information Than You Require.

Gideon Yago is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning journalist, best known for his work on MTV News.  He's the host of The IFC Media Project.

The Dirtbombs are a Detroit-based rock and roll band.  Their newest album is We Have You Surrounded.

Raphael Saadiq is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.  He was a founding member of the groups Tony! Toni! Tone! and Lucy Pearl.

Pete Rothbart is an editor at Found Magazine, a magazine composed exclusively of things people have found -- from shopping lists to personal notes to (once) a dead frog.

Dan Savage is the writer of the sex and relationship advice column Savage Love, which runs in alternative newspapers around the country.  He also edits the Seattle newspaper The Stranger.  This interview was recorded live on stage at Seattle Sketchfest.

Graham Linehan is an Irish comedy writer, who co-created the sitcom Father Ted, and created the series The IT Crowd.  He also worked on shows like Big Train, Brasseye, and The Day Today. 

Election comedy from Jordan Morris, an essay from Simon Rich and a SPOOKTACULAR sketch from Elephant Larry.

Mikita Brottman is the author of The Solitary Vice: Against Reading.

Sarah Vowell is the bestselling author of numerous books of memoir and popular history.  Her most recent is The Wordy Shipmates.

Calexico are a Tucson, Arizona based band known for their unique blend of traditional Mexican music and Southwestern sound. 

Marianna Palka is the writer, director and star of the independent film Good Dick, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is currently in theaters.

Music from Bumbershoot, with Jonathan Coulton, PWRFL Power and Rhett Miller of the Old 97s.

Comedy from Greg Behrendt and Tig Notaro, plus a bonus interview with Behrendt.

Janeane Garofalo is an actress and standup comic.  She's currently a co-star on the FOX series 24, and is working the road as a standup as part of the "Satiristas."

Sandra Tsing Loh is a performer, commentator and writer based in Los Angeles.  Her most recent book, about sending her daughter to school, is Mother On Fire: A True Mother*#$(ing Story About Parenting.

Louis CK is a comedian, writer and director.  His new Showtime comedy special is Louis CK: Chewed Up.  He created and starred in the HBO series Lucky Louie and wrote and directed the cult film Pootie Tang.

Andy Daly is an actor and comedian.  He's probably best known as a former cast member on Mad TV, or as a mad announcer in last summer's Semi-Pro.  He's just released his first CD, Nine Sweaters.

Ratatat are an instrumental music duo whose their album, LP3, was recently released.  Their sound combines elements of rock, hip-hop and dance music.

Chip Kidd is one of the world's best-known designers; he's designed book covers for innumerable authors.  He's also a comic novelist.  His most recent novel is The Learners.

The Human Giant are a sketch group whose eponymous series airs on MTV.  We talked with them live on stage at Bumbershoot.

Comics artist Adrian Tomine is the creator of the series Optic Nerve.  His most recent book is "Shortcomings."

Chris Bowman interviews the Los Angeles indie pop group The Submarines.  Their most recent album is Honeysuckle Weeks.

Robert Popper was co-creator of the British comedy series "Look Around You."  He's also the author, as "Robin Cooper" of "The Timewaster Letters," which are smash bestsellers in the UK, and have just been released in the US.

Seun Kuti is the leader of the band Egypt 80, which was founded by his father, the legendary creator of Afrobeat, Fela Kuti.

Bob Powers is the author of the new choose-your-own-adventure-style book "You Are a Miserable Excuse for a Hero."

The Hold Steady are a Brooklyn-based, Minneapolis-bred rock and roll band.  They're known for grand songs about teenagers and tough times.

Chris Parnell is an actor best known for his long stint on Saturday Night Live.  He's also appeared in films like Anchorman and recently, Kabluey.

Roger Bennett is co-author of "Camp Camp: Where Fantasy Island Meets Lord of the Flies."  It's a collection of reminiscences and ephemera related to summer camp.

The Explorers Club are a South Carolina-based rock band, whose music recalls the Southern California rock of the 1960s and the melodramatic pop of Phil Spector.

Ze Frank is an internet super-celebrity, and the principal of zefrank.com.  His year-long daily video blog project, The Show, was one of the first great successes of the video blog world.

Jay Smooth is a hip-hop radio host, blogger and vlogger.  This interview was recorded live at Sketchfest NYC at the UCB Theater in New York.

Comedy from Michael Showalter and Pangea 3000, music from Dawn Landes.  Recorded live in New York.

Scott Prendergast is the writer, director and star of the indie comedy Kabluey.  The film, which also stars Lisa Kudrow, concerns a young man helping tend to his brother's children while his brother is serving in Iraq.

Blu is the MC half of the hip-hop duo Blu & Exile.  They released their critically-acclaimed first album, "Below the Heavens," last year.

John Reiss is the director of the documentary film "Bomb It". The film focuses on the world wide phenomenon of graffiti.

David A. Price is the author of The Pixar Touch: The Making Of A Company. The book traces the history of Pixar from technology company to entertainment behemoth.

Benjamin Nugent is the author of "American Nerd: The Story of My People," a combination of memoir, sociology and reportage on the nerd in American life.

Ariel Schrag wrote the autobiographical comics Definition, Awkward and Potential while still in high school in the late 90s.  The books were just re-published.

Mark Oliver Everett, sometimes known as E, joins us.  He's the frontman of the rotating cast that makes up the rock band The Eels.

Richard Zoglin is the author of "Comedy at the Edge: How stand-up comedy in the 1970's changed America".

Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby talk about their book "The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts."

TSOYA is live at Sketchfest NYC at the UCB Theater in New York on June 14th, with guests Ze Frank, Jay Smooth, Pangea 3000 and Dawn Landes.

The Grouch is a fixture in the West Coast independent hip-hop scene, as a solo artist and as a member of The Living Legends.  The group help blaze the trail for independent, underground hip-hop in the early to mid 1990s.

Jack Handey is the creator of "Deep Thoughts," and now the author of "What I'd Say To The Martians (and Other Veiled Threats)." 

Hey!  You there who reads the podcast feed with a feed reader!  Have you donated to support Maximum Fun yet?

Kenny Mayne is a long-time ESPN personality.  He's now also an author, with "An Incomplete & Innacurate History of Sport."

Guests Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant and Kerri Kenney-Silver are the co-creators and stars of Reno 911.  The Comedy Central series, which spoofs COPS-style reality shows, is entering the second half of its fifth season.  The trio also collaborated on the series "Viva Variety," and first worked together as members of the MTV sketch series The State.

Nellie McKay is a singer-songwriter who's garnered broad acclaim for her spectacular singing voice and her wry, funny songs.

Mike Birbiglia is a standup comedian.  His new special "What I Should Have Said Was Nothing: My Secret Public Journal Live" adapts stories from his popular online diary.

Mark Evanier is that author of Kirby: King of Comics, a lavishly illustrated biography of comic book legend Jack Kirby.  He also worked with Kirby in the 1960s and 70s.

David Hajdu is an award-winning cultural historian.  His book The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America, about the censorship of comics in the mid-1950s.

Bill James is the father of sabermetrics, that objective analysis and study of baseball.  His bright, funny writing brought baseball analysis to the masses in the 1980s, and helped revolutionize the management of baseball teams in the 21st century.  Today, he works for the Boston Red Sox.

Sloane Crosley is author of the humorous essay collection "I Was Told There'd Be Cake."  It recently debuted on the New York Times bestseller list.

Gaberiel Alvarez and Brent Rollins are members of the hip-hop media collective Ego Trip.  The group produced the acclaimed magazine Ego Trip in the 1990s, and has since written two books and created several series and specials for VH1, the most recent of which is Ego Trip's Miss Rap Supreme.

John Moe is the author of Conservatize Me: How I Tried to Become a Righty With The Help of Richard Nixon, Sean Hannity, Toby Keith and Beef Jerky.  He's also a contributor to American Public Media's Weekend America.

David Mitchell is half of the British comedy team Mitchell & Webb.  They're the stars of the acclaimed UK TV series "Peep Show" and "That Mitchell & Webb Look," the latter of which is running in the US on BBC America.

Dan Kennedy is the author of "Rock On: An Office Power Ballad."  It's a comic memoir about his time in the music industry.

Prof. Eric Hoffman and Dr. Gary Rudoren are comedy researchers who've created Comedy by the Numbers: 169 Secrets of Humor and Popularity.

We're having a t-shirt contest, looking for a design for a special, super-limited-edition T for our upcoming Maximum Fun Drive.  Anyone can enter and anyone can vote on the entries.  Visit pixish.com and search for TSOYA.

Ben Karlin was editor of The Onion, Executive Producer and Head Writer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a writer on America: The Book and co-creator of The Colbert Report.  He's just edited a book called Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me.

One of the LA alt-comedy scenes newest faces and one of its veterans perform standup.

A special video request from Jesse: ask your local public radio stations to carry The Sound of Young America.  The stakes are huge for the future of the show, and a quick phone call or email can make a huge difference.

Tony Millionaire is the creator of the cartoon strip Maakies, which runs in alternative newspapers around the country.  The strip has recently been picked up as a television series on adult swim called The Drinky Crow Show.

Joel Hodgson was the original host of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  He and his cohorts J. Elvis Weinstein and Frank Conniff discuss their new venture, Cinematic Titanic, which is, format-wise, a followup to MST3K.

Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich are the hosts of the public radio program RadioLab.  It's a boldly artful show about big ideas, seen largely through the lens of science.  The program's aesthetic combines Krulwich's extensive reportorial background with Abumrad's history as an experimental radio producer and music composer.  (If you got a partial download of this show last week, delete that file and re-download.)

Ken Freedman and Andy Brechkman are the hosts of the cult comedy-talk radio program Seven Second Delay on Jersey City freeform radio giant WFMU.  Their show might be the highest concept talk show in the world.  Ken also manages WFMU; Andy is the creator of the USA series Monk.

Zach Rogue is frontman of the San Francisco indie rock band Rogue Wave.  High-quality downloads of his songs can be found online at our site, maximumfun.org.

Danny Hoch is an Obie award-winning actor and writer, and the founder of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival.  His newest show, Takin Over, concerns the gentrification of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Bucky Sinister performs a poem from his collection All Blacked Out and Nowhere to Go.

Merlin Mann is the founder of 43folders.com and a leader in the field of "lifehacking."

Jeffrey Blitz is the director of the film "Rocket Science."  He also directed the documentary "Spellbound."

Comedy from Stephen Bropy as self-help guru Bill Weatherall.

Swamp Dogg is a soul legend, both as a performer and as a songwriter and producer.  His eccentric and funny albums are beloved by soul afficianados.

We are joined by Tim Harrington and Syd Butler of the band Les Savy Fav.  Their new album is called Let's Stay Friends.

Eric Lax is the author of Conversations with Woody Allen as well as Woody Allen: A Biography.

Wendell Pierce and Andre Royo play Bunk and Bubbles, respectively, on HBO's The Wire.

The Sound of Young America is LIVE in SF on January 14th. Buy your tickets now for just ten dollars!

The AV Club's editors join us to tell us about the best music and movies of 2007.

Chris Hardwick is the host of PBS TV's Wired Science, and half of the comedy music duo Hard N Phirm.

Chris Elliott is a legendary comic writer and actor.  Now he's also a novelist.

 Comedy from Wyatt Cenac.

Steve Albini is one of the world's most accomplished rock producers.  He's recorded over 1000 albums for more than 1000 bands, including Nirvana, The Stooges and Joanna Newsom.  Recorded live in Chicago at the Second City.

Comedy from Hannibal Burress, Schadenfreude, Team Submarine and The Second City.  Recorded live in Chicago.