Book excerpt: "Pulsars are fascinating objects that have taught us much about our Universe, from gravitational radiation to the extreme states of matter and planets beyond our solar system. Most pulsars are detected via the beams of radio waves they radiate from their magnetic poles. Conducting high-time-resolution surveys with powerful radio telescopes to discover more pulsars has been a gateway to new science. A notable example is the discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs): short-duration and extremely energetic extragalactic radio transients of unknown origin. In this thesis, we report on results of two large-scale surveys for radio pulsars and fast transients. The first is the 1.4-GHz PALFA survey, conducted with the 305-m Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico from 2004 until the collapse of the instrument in 2020. PALFA targeted the Galactic plane, where the neutron star density is greatest, with the goal of probing a distant population located deep in the plane. Chapters 3 and 4 present the discovery and study of 80 pulsars discovered by PALFA, more than a third of the total survey yield. Spin and astrometric measurements were obtained through long-term pulsar timing observations carried out at various facilities, allowing us to determine the pulsars' properties. More specifically, Chapter 3 focuses on the timing analysis of eight PALFA-discovered binary millisecond pulsars (MSPs): a class of old and fast-spinning (period