A really great podcast episode well worth listening to is 17 Great Questions That Can Change Your Life, by Tim Ferriss. This is an audible extract from his book Tools of Titans. In this session he lists the 17 questions that he asks himself on a regular basis in order to get the most from his life. They are very effective probes. This podcast is a good introduction to his book, which is also very useful. — KK

I’m late to the party, but I’ve been enjoying the sweet sounds of the now popular group Pentatonix. It’s a five-voice a cappella choir. One voice is a great beat-box artist who supplies the instrumentation. Somehow their arrangements get everything right. They do originals and covers and I can listen to them for hours. They found their audience on YouTube. — KK

A new podcast I am enjoying is Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History. You get typical Gladwellian reporting, voiced by Gladwell himself. His theme is the re-telling of things everyone knows, so that these “official” stories are inverted, reversed, undermined, or in some way seen new. It’s contrarian by design. If you like his books, you’ll like his podcast and vice versa. — KK

An awesome podcast episode that I loved is “The Man of the People” on Reply All. In only 42 minutes it tells the nearly incredible true story about a charlatan who made millions by surgically implanting goat testicals in men, almost became governor of Kansas to escape censure, moved to the Mexico side of the border to broadcast in the US without US oversight, made country and western music a national thing, by his quackery provoked the creation of the AMA (American Medical Association), and invented commercial radio. This podcast has the distinction of being the first podcast to be turned into a Hollywood movie, starring Robert Downey Jr. If you want to know what podcasts are about, try this one. — KK

Some of the best music being written these days is for movie soundtracks. Because they usually lack dialog and lyrics, I find movie scores easy to listen to while working. If you want some suggestions to start with, this is a decent list of the best scores since the start of this century. Quite a few of them are available on Spotify. — KK

Get free, high-quality sound effects of almost anything you can think of for your podcasts, apps, or movies at Freesound. — MF

I’ve been using the SoundHound smartphone app for years to identify songs, but my 15-year-old told me to switch to Shazam. She’s right, it’s much easier to use the features that I need. My favorite way to use: If I’m in a store or a coffee shop that’s playing unfamiliar music that sounds great, I just press the large button on the screen and it will grab the title and artist of every song and save it for later. I can then easily add the songs to Apple Music (you can also save to Spotify) and save them to my library. — MF

The free NaturalReader smartphone app (iOS and Android) converts text to speech. To use it, open the app, select a document from DropBox, Google Reader, or a website. NaturalReader will upload it and read it in a voice of your choosing. — MF

VoiceBase takes audio recordings and turns them into text. It also analyzes the text to identify subjects and keywords, and can play back the audio as it highlights the text. It’s not as good as a human transcriber, but it does a decent job and is much cheaper (2 cents a minute compared to $1 a minute for a human).You get $60 in free credit to try it out, too. — MF

I do most of my writing and editing in Google Docs. Sometimes, though, I am asked to edit a manuscript in Word. In those cases, I don’t really use Word because it is bloated and clunky. Instead, I use a free Word-compatible word processor called Bean (for OS X only). It’s snappy and the “full screen” view creates a distraction-free editing experience. — MF

Sometimes my eyes deceive me when proofreading. I came across this blog post and now I’ve been double-checking long paragraphs by right clicking on them (using Chrome) and selecting Speech > Start Speaking. If it sounds off, it usually means I dropped a word. — CD 

I use Evernote for work and personal note keeping, but I have to admit Bear, which is referred to as the “beautiful writing app”, is more enjoyable to use on my phone. It’s so clean and pretty and easy to format. I’ve been using it as a daily journal and for poem writing. — CD 

After decades of being a hunt-and-peck typist, I’m finally forcing myself to learn touch typing. After trying a bunch of different typing websites, I’ve settled on How To Type as my favorite. It’s not fancy, but the drills have helped me to become more accurate. — MF

FutureMe is a tried and true free service for sending yourself letters in the future. I use it to remind myself of goals I have or enlightening quotes I want to be reminded of. — CD 

I tend to write like I think, run on and using a lot of commas. If I drop my text into the Hemingway Editor it will highlight unnecessary words, and tell me what to fix to make my writing more concise. — CD

These succinct tips for how to write an op-ed piece are clear, 100% correct, and useful for any kind of factual writing. Compresses a whole course, or book, to 15 bullet points. — KK

Tyke is a free, simple MacOS menubar app that opens a small text-only scratch pad. It converts copied text into plain text, which I like. I’ve only had it for couple of days, but I’m already using it multiple times a day. — MF

I’ve long been a fan of blank (no-lines) Moleskine notebooks, large and small. I recently switched to Minimalism Art notebooks which are very similar, maybe better quality, and half the price. They also come in bright cover colors. — KK

This 8¼” x 6” spiral bound notebook costs $3.50. It has light green paper and 30 college-spaced rules per page. I like the smaller-than-usual size because it takes up less room on my desk and in my backpack. — MF

This small, watercolor kit by Sakura is perfect for the occasional wannabe artist like me. It comes with a brush that stores water, so you can always be ready to paint. It was so easy to incorporate this into my journaling/sketching routine. — CD