Things I Like Right Now {Podcasts and CGP Grey}

Recently, I did a blog post about some blogs I read, and I thought maybe it would be fun to do a similar post, but instead of blogs, it would just be other random stuff I'm into. If you guys like this, maybe I'll try to do these regularly, maybe every month or two.

My big obsession recently has been podcasts. I've been listening to Welcome to Nightvale for almost a year now, and it introduced me to the wide world of podcasts. Radiolab, and This American Life are classics that are favorites of mine, and of course I had to jump on the bandwagon with Serial as well.

Nightvale is definitely my favorite fictional podcast, but of the talk show/educational variety, there is also little competition. Hello Internet is by far my favorite. It's a podcast of the "Two Dudes Talking" style, and if you don't like that, or if you don't like the two dudes (CGP Grey and Brady Haran), you wouldn't like it. It's nerdy, it's educational, it's funny, it's weird, and best of all, there are currently 31 episodes of nearly two hours each, meaning you won't run out too quickly. 

Finding this picture was a dangerous endeavor: I had to do a Google image search for CGP Grey. Grey is anonymous on the web, you never see what he looks like in any of his videos, and while pictures of him aren't that hard to find, I don't want to see them. I just don't.

CGP Grey has long been one of my favorite YouTubers, and since listening to his podcast, he has become one of my very favorite internet people (somewhere up there with Hank Green and Wil Wheaton). I am nowhere near as anal or organized as he is, but is is kind of what I aspire to be. Since listening to him, I've started using a lot of his suggested apps and here are a few that I've come to really like.

1. Overcast. This is a free podcast app that I started using at his suggestion (and the suggestion of a friend of mine who is probably a bigger Hello Internet fan than I am). I haven't been using it very long, but so far I like it. It's a thousand times better than the one that comes on iOS (not that that's very hard), and it's well organized.

2. Anki. This is a flashcard app that I absolutely love. It allows you to create cards and decks, and has many options to personalize how you use it. It's not the prettiest app, but it is very functional. It shuffles your cards for you, and shows them to you at intervals that are optimal for memorization. It can be a bit confusing at first, partly because of it's rather bare bones structure, but if you put some time into getting it how you want it, it's amazing. The desktop app is free to use. You can purchase a mobile app for the hefty sum of $24.99, but I haven't tried that personally (mainly because of the cost), so I can't vouch to it's quality. 

Another random thing not related to podcasts that I love is the webcomic XKCD. I've been a fan of  XKCD for a long time, and I can't believe I've never mentioned it on the blog before. It's funny, it's geeky, it's current, and it's sometimes a little inappropriate, and I highly recommend checking it out.