The Basetrip provides essential information you need when traveling internationally. Just enter your country of origin and your destination and the site will tell you the currency exchange rate, mobile phone service options, the crime rate, electrical outlets, drug and prostitution laws, and more. For an extra $5 per trip, you’ll get passport & visa information, travel advisories, and language phrases with audio pronunciation. — MF

If Burning Man was created by a single eccentric artist, it would be Robolights, a four-acre mind-blowing sculptural landscape in Palm Springs, California, created by Kenny Irwin. It’s the only place I’ve visited that matches the surreal feeling I get from dreams. Free. Open from November to January each year. — MF

The world’s coolest nature museum: The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England. It’s a day trip from London. Take the 1-hour train to Oxford, then walk 15 minutes from the station to the museum, co-housed with the Oxford University Nature Museum. Enter into a lost world of curiosity. You are surrounded by three floors of artifacts collected over centuries by eccentric British explorers. Displays include shrunken heads, voodoo dolls, tomb relics, weird insects, ancient folk tools, dinosaur skeletons, taxidermy galore, uncountable biological, and mineralogical specimens, all stacked in glassy cabinets with typed cards and labels. It’s supremely old-school and hugely satisfying. — KK

If your eyes aren’t perfect and you wear corrective lenses, you can purchase inexpensive swim goggles with corrective lenses built in. They make a huge difference underwater. I use TYR Corrective Goggles, about $20. Select your prescription strength, between -2 and -8. — KK

My husband wears a Road ID bracelet on long bike rides, but prefers a necklace so I chose to get him a Crashtag because they have a lot more designs to choose from. It looks cool and the tag doubles as a bottle opener. I had it printed with our new address and my phone number, but there is enough space to include medical information or multiple lines of text. — CD

I played this social deception/deduction game with about a dozen other people. If you’ve played Werewolf or Mafia you’ll be familiar with this kind of game. In Two Rooms and a Boom, the goal is for team red to blow up the president, and the goal of team blue is to stop them. Each game takes about 15 minutes and if you’re like me, you’ll end up playing multiple rounds until way past your bedtime. It’s addictive — MF

Rubik’s Cube, and whenever I used to try, I’d get discouraged because the cube would lock up when turning it. Then I discovered Chinese speed cubes. They are very smooth and a pleasure to use. I’m working on a 2 x 2 x 2 mini-cube ($7) instead of the usual 3 x 3 x 3. Still haven’t cracked it! — MF

To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time. — Leonard Bernstein

A maxim I am paying attention to is an anonymous quote: “It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than think your way into a new way of acting.” This is a handy way to remember that smiling makes me happier, and acting as if I am confident makes me more confident and that changing my behavior is a great way to change my mind. — KK

In the last six months I’ve learned over 500 kanji characters and Japanese vocabulary words using WaniKani, a “spaced repetition system” flashcard website. The first 3 levels are free, after that you can pay by the year or buy a lifetime account. (Disclosure, my wife used to work at WaniKani’s parent company). — MF

Dr. Moku’s Hiragana and Katakana apps use mnemonics to help you memorize the Japanese syllabaries. Within 60 minutes I had all the syllables memorized (roughly 100). — MF

For a variety of reasons, most hotels don’t supply toothpaste in rooms. (Here’s an article from Slate that explains why.) And you can’t take a standard-sized tube in carry-on luggage because the toothpaste police at the airport will confiscate it. I stock up on 12 packs of 0.85-ounce tubes of Crest. — MF

This small $15 electric razor from Philips Norelco uses 2 AA batteries. I bring it with me when I travel and have started using it at home too, because it works so well. — MF 

My 15-year-old daughter learned about blood types in school and was curious to learn her blood type. I ordered two of these kits (each $12 kit has two tests) so our whole family could find out what our blood types are. The included auto-lance makes it easy to draw blood (it hurts just a little, not much) and it was interesting to see how our blood types clotted differently. — MF

I travel with a mini-pharmacy in my day pack, particularly overseas. I use inexpensive pill organizers to hold common non-prescription remedies. These small plastic strips are sold as “7-day” containers for folks who need to take multiple pills per pay, but I put just a few doses of different medicines in each slot. I carry remedies for semi-emergencies like motion sickness, allergies, colds, diarrhea, pain, sleep aid, coughing, upset stomach, etc. I stick a tiny label on each compartment with the name and dosage, which is enough. I restock the few doses before each trip. Off-the-shelf medicines are not rare abroad, but language and branding differences often make it a chore to secure them. Using these light and compact containers I (and traveling companions) have access to a wide range of immediate treatments. — KK

My preconception of the mega-speaker Tony Robbins was shattered by a Netflix documentary on him. For decades I had the image Robbins as an over-the-top motivational speaker, a fast-talking get-rich salesman, a new-age be-yourself booster. But he is more of a fast-talking therapist or shrink. I really enjoyed the streaming doc I Am Not Your Guru and learned some things, although I still feel no need to attend his seminars. — KK

Les Revenants (The Returned) is a French supernatural television series (with English subtitles) that my wife and I are enjoying. The first episode opens with a terrible school bus accident in the alps that leaves 38 children dead. Four years later, some of the children return home, un-aged and unharmed. Spooky and fun. — MF 

More people should know about Nuzzel. It’s the sane and efficient way I consume social media without having to read it. Nuzzel displays the six most recommended links each day among all the people I follow on social media. So instead of reading those endless feeds, I read my one page Nuzzel digest and get the six best articles that are most read by my friends. — KK

Every day I get the entire internet compressed into a single page. My first stop is Hvper, which is a super aggregator that collects the top headlines of every news source out there into ONE single page. I see what’s at the top of mind in the both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, plus HuffPo and Fox News, plus Al Jazeera and the Drudge Report. Plus Reddit, Digg, BuzzNews, Twitter, CNN, ABC, Verge, Wired, and on and on. All of it! The whole news media landscape in a one-page dashboard. Each headline is clickable directly to the source. It is fast, clean (no ads!), free and magical. Must read. — KK

I feel it is important to keep up with the advent of AI, so I subscribe to a daily email one-pager which succinctly reports the news in AI each day. There is a lot happening, but this email is short and to the point. Get it from Inside AI. — KK

and