When Kevin Kelly started Cool Tools as an email list over 20 years ago, his goal was to foster a community of people who wanted to share recommendations of tried-and-true tools. It worked! Today Cool Tools is the most popular website of tool recommendations written by its readers.

A few years ago, after I joined Kevin, we started the Cool Tools Show podcast with the belief that the interesting people who use interesting tools will have interesting things to say about them. The format for our podcast is simple: Kevin and I ask a guest (such as Adam Savage, Tim Ferriss, and Veronica Belmont) to recommend four tools they depend on and believe others would like. Then they share with everyone why their tools are great. The format is a success — the podcast has many thousands of listeners. We are grateful for the audience and we love making the podcast.

Many hours are needed to schedule, record, edit, transcribe, and post each episode. Currently I edit the podcasts, but it is time consuming, and so we aren’t able to post a new episode every week, which is our goal. To continue producing these podcasts at the quality we have been, we’d like to hire an editor. We are asking for support from our listeners through Patreon so we can continue to post one great episode every week with the help of an editor. Your support of even $1 per month (just 25 cents a show) will make a difference in helping us achieve this goal.

When you contribute, we will thank you in a variety of ways, ranging from copies of books that Kevin and I have written, to a guest slot on the podcast!

Here’s a message from Kevin about our podcast:

-- Mark Frauenfelder 05/16/17