Not sure if you're looking for an automated solution (I'm looking for that too!) but as far as manual edits go the following Reaper features will make your life easier:

* Ripple editing (Alt-P, once to enable for one track, twice to enable for all tracks - keeps stuff in sync, prevents gaps)

* Auto crossfade (enabled by default; just split a clip with by hitting "S" and drag one part on top of the other to create a smoothly editable fade)

* Jump to transient (Tab/Shift-Tab for next/previous, Ctrl-Tab for nearest)

* Peaks: Toggle spectrogram and peaks (this one doesn't have a shortcut, but you can find it in the actions palette that opens when you hit "?")

hah I wish I could! I've only done it a handful of times myself, but enough times to realize that if it looks like there'll be more of it in my future, I'll either hire it out or get someone to show me a faster workflow. That being said though, I have learned a few things which might be helpful.

First, during your recording session, record a track with no performance at all, just the mic in the location that you'll be recording, with no noise gate. I usually record about 5 minutes of that and then loop it to create a track. Having this room sound in the background of the track means that if you split out a word or sound from the performance track, there won't be a discontinuity in the ambient room sound.

I also use the Markers feature in Reaper heavily- the first time I listen back to the performance, I'll add markers wherever I hear a mouth noise, click, or an umm/uhh which sounds awkward. If nothing else, I can look at the markers and get an idea of how much work there is to do, and having the markers makes it easy to move the cursor to the next edit.

For the actual edits, I typically just zoom in on the region around the sound, use the keyboard split shortcut to split the region, and then hit the shortcut for toggle item mute for the item with the word. Reaper has an option to automatically crossfade items on split, which I have enabled, and I can drag the volume envelope to keep the previous word from getting chopped too sharply.

I've been using the Izotope Declick/Denoise plugin, which is inexpensive and seems to work pretty well. I suspect that there are some things I could be doing to dramatically speed up the process I mentioned above- fortunately youtube is loaded with Reaper tutorials for this sort of thing, and I look forward to learning some new tricks!

why are you editing them out? they're natural things, people don't really hear them unless they're trying to.

They waste time and lower information density, and also, for the few people who do notice them, they get very irritating. Getting rid of filler words where natural is pretty standard practice for longer-form videos.

If you're using a video to obtain information, you're already resolved to a low information density.

Jumpcut editing - popular amongst some of the youtube crowd - can be way more frustrating for some consumers than hearing a person periodically pause with an uhm / ahh, or insert the word 'like' several times a sentence, or start every sentence with 'So...'.

I’ve been receiving scam voicemails that use some AI to try and sound like a human that adds umms and uhg’s to try and sound more lifelike.

Often when people are aware they're being recorded, especially for some kind of production like a podcast that they're accustomed to hearing with edits, they'll make far more umms and ahhs than they would in an ordinary conversation. I think maybe its because they're concentrating on the continuity of their speech? Whatever the reason, I usually just try to get the number of these tics down to a level that sounds like casual conversation. I don't think most listeners notice when the tics are edited out, but a significant number seem to find them annoying enough that some judicious editing improves overall happiness with the production :)

because in my audios I look (hear?) smarter without it :-)

descript.com works pretty well, but it's not free. Under the hood, it uses Google Speech-to-Text, so if you were creative enough, you could probably build something similar. I find it easier to pay descript.com when I need it. :) You can export tracks back out to video and audio multi-track editing apps with the Pro plan.

Not a reaper user but I imagine you'd need to run it through a text to speech plugin then mark times with either those words or a duration without dictionary words.