• The Hold Steady will be in Atlanta, GA at the Variety Playhouse on August 30th; at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC on August 31st; at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC on Sept. 1st; and at the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville, VA on Sept. 2nd.
• Mavis Staples will appear at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival on Sept. 3rd and Das Racist will also appear at the festival on Sept. 4th.
• There will be a great lineup of comedians at Bumbershoot from Sept. 3rd to Sept. 5th, including Doug Benson (who will be recording an episode of "Doug Loves Movies"), Kyle Kinane, Scott Aukerman (who will be recording "Comedy Bang! Bang!"), Paul F. Tompkins and Eugene Mirman.
• Benson will also be appearing earlier in the week on August 29th at Hyena's in Ft. Worth, TX and on Sept. 1st at Helium in Philadelphia, PA.
• The Rock the Bells festival (which includes performances by Mobb Deep, Childish Gambino and Blu & Exile) will be coming to Governor's Island in New York on Sept. 3rd.
• Dr. Dog will perform on August 29th at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, RI; on Sept. 1st at the Chance Theater in Poughkeepsie, NY; and on Sept. 3rd at the WHYY Connections Festival on Penns Landing in Philadelphia, PA.
• Tig Notaro, as usual, is keeping very busy. On August 31st, she will be at the Opolis in Norman, OK; on Sept. 1st she'll be at Press Bar in Kansas City, MO; and on Sept. 3rd at Firebirds in St. Louis, MO.
• Jonathan Coulton will be performing Sept. 2nd with Paul and Storm at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, GA. Looks like this will be his last show before launching his extensive fall tour with They Might Be Giants.
• Greg Proops will be recording his Smartest Man in the World podcast at the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival in Austin on September 4th.

A terrific interview with Scott Aukerman that addresses podcasting, writing, comedy groupies and the theme song for "MacGruber".

Aziz Ansari is making a series of "Watch The Throne" comics on his aptly-named Tumblr "Aziz Is Bored".

An aurally fascinating piece about Radiolab that demonstrates how the show explores complex topics through the attempted re-creation of unrecordable sounds. Includes links to their efforts to mimic a sleeping cat's brain, confused neurons and, of course, the Big Bang.

And finally,"Antique Trader" tells us how the intrepid Casino Chip & Gaming Token Collectors Club (the CC & GTCC for short) found thousands of vintage casino chips buried in a pile of sand behind a convenience store in Carson City.

• Scott Aukerman will host a comedy block on IFC tied to the Comedy Death Ray name, weaving short interviews with episodes of well-loved comedy series including The Larry Sanders Show, The Ben Stiller Show and his own Mr. Show. It looks as though he'll be talking to several of our past guests, including Sarah Silverman.
  
  
• Lots of news from The Flaming Lips: you'll be able to catch their NYE show live (and on January 1st) on RollingStone.com. They'll be playing their album "The Soft Bulletin" in its entirety at the show. They've also announced that for their new album, they'll be releasing a song a month in 2011, as soon as each is completed.
  
  
• The Wire and Treme's Wendell Pierce shows us around his New Orleans, showcasing some of his favorite spots.
  
  
• In case you haven't read Patton Oswalt’s Wired piece on “why geek culture must die” that's created such a firestorm, start with the original essay -- then you can go on to read all the responses of nerd outrage.
  
  
• And finally, Nick Thune, in an informative video about how to write a piece for The Tonight Show, gives us some pointers that could probably work in any field, so long as you're avoiding the task at hand.
  

Hour Five, featuring Clifford & Kidd and Scott Aukerman.

Hour Six, featuring Stephen Tobolowsky and Karen Kilgariff